New Appalachian Books: Write-Ups

NEW APPALACHIAN BOOKS Write-Ups____________ George Brosi Dan Auiler. Cold Mountain: The Journey from Book to Film. New York: Newmarket Press, 2003. 192 pages with 170 color photos plus 32 additional black-and-whites shot on location by Brigitte Lacombe and both text and excerpts from Charles Frazier, the book author, and Anthony Minghella, the film director and writer. Oversized hardback in dust jacket. $30.00. Actually this book surprisingly really does fit right in with this magnificent movie and the deft novel that spawned it. The book delivers beyond expectations stunning photos of the beautiful young stars, adroit comments of the principals and even fascinating sketches of costumes and buildings juxtaposed with the final creations. Evelyn McAmis Bales. Kinkeeper. Cincinnati: Finishing Line Press, 2003. 25 pages. Staple-bound paperback. $12.00. This volume is part of the publisher's New Women's Voices Chapbook Series. It includes twenty-four poems, five that originally appeared here in Appalachian Heritage. A veteran English teacher, the author works for the Sullivan County Schools in Kingsport, Tennessee. "This compact gathering of poems unfolds for us the verities of community and family life in a rich profusion of telling detail, from historical narratives to modern lyric poems of honest, hard-won music and insight." —Jim Clark. Tim Barnwell. The Face ofAppalachia: Portraitsfrom the Mountain Farm. New York: Norton, 2003. 157 pages full of black and white photos. Hardback in dust jacket. $29.95. What a beautiful coffee-table book! I can't decide which I love best: the full-page black and white photos of rural Madison County North Carolinians or the section at the end which reproduces the photos thumbnail sized and adds quotes from the subjects. Both sections are delightful. "[Tim Barnwell] may be the most gifted documentary photographer to come out of Appalachia since the Depression."—The Village Voice. 82 Jean Battlo. Pictorial History ofMcDowell County: 1858-1958, From Rural Farms to Coal Kingdom. Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company, 2003. 557 pages with over 500 photos and an index. Oversized trade paperback. $40.00. This book provides a comprehensive photographic pilgrimage through a key West Virginia coalfield county. Ace Boggess. The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled. Denver, Pennsylvania: Highwire Press, 2003. 52 pages. Trade paperback. $8.00. This is the first collection of an up-and-coming young poet from Huntington, West Virginia. "Ace Boggess's passion for philosophy counterpoints his sensuous descriptions and romantic longings, resulting in engaging poems that meet the reader more than half way." —Natasha Saje. Anthony Cavender. Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachia. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 266 pages with an index, bibliography, photos and maps. Hardback in dust jacket. $55.00. Trade paperback. $19.95. What is surprising is that this book has just now appeared to fill such an obvious gap. What is gratifying is that it is so comprehensive. What is so exciting is how well done it is. The author is a professor of anthropology at East Tennessee State University. Hap Cawood. The Miler. Yellow Springs, Ohio: Cimarron Books, 2003. 265 pages with photos and a map. Trade paperback. $14.99. This is an autobiographical novel about growing up in the fifties and coaching track in the sixties in Harlan, Kentucky. The author subsequentlyjoined the Peace Corps and enjoyed a successful career as a newspaperman in Dayton, Ohio. Billy C. Clark. Miss America Kissed Caleb: Stories. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2003. 173 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $24.95. Here are eleven new, previously unpublished, short stories from Billy C. Clark, the author of thirteen previous books, mostly from New York publishers. Clark grew up poor in Cattlettsburg in the northeastern corner of Kentucky in the 1940s, and these stories reflect that environment unfailingly. 83 J. Timothy Cole. The Forest City Lynching of 1900: Populism, Racism, and White Supremacy in Rutherford County, North Carolina. 195 pages with an index, bibliography, notes and appendices, illustrated with photos. Trade paperback. $30.00. This book is the tenth in the publisher's "Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies" series. The author is the great-great grandson of Mills Higgins Flack, a Farmer's Alliance leader who was murdered...