Mount Mitchell and The Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks in Eastern America (review)

roots. In his picture (yes, she gives us pictures of Zeb and "Sam") Vance is a ruggedly handsome man with deep-set eyes and a clean strongjaw. It is easily seen why he inspired such loyalty from men and women alike. I'd vote for him in a minute! Malinda (Sam) is one of the women who "Tied back their hair, men's clothing put on" and rode with their husbands while the cruel war was raging. InMalinda, McCrumb has found a fitting example ofthese women who generally aren't acknowledged inhistory. Malinda stares directly into the reader's eyes from her picture, holding the reader with her iron core of resolve. We see Malinda and herhusband Keith change during the course of the war; he changes more than she does. He is loving, albeit hottempered , but the war hardens him into a vengeful, cruel man with little concern for others. Still, their love for one another persists through the hardships, the battles, and the privations of the war in the mountains. McCrumb is a true Appalachian; she gives the mountain dialect in words rather than odd spellings. The mountain voices sound clearly while the music weaves hauntingly in and out of her story in small pieces and mountain vistas spread out in a patchwork. Folklore and little known Appalachian history is peppered throughout—from the details of battle to the conflict between neighbors, something often more pronounced in the mountains than in the valleys. The reader has to smile at the references to "Earth Shoe People," snowbirds, and those who come for our land, but look down upon the people and customs. The story is so well intertwined that sometimes the reader forgets whether she's reading history or fiction. This is an eerie, stirring novel, entertaining and educational. In the end McCrumb gives us further historical facts about the characters' lives. When finished, I closed the book with a satisfied smile and a thump. It was indeed a warm quilt of words. But a last question remains—how long do we have to wait for another one? —JoAnn Aust Asbury Timothy H. Silver. Mount Mitchell and The Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks in Eastern America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 322 pages. Hardcover. $39.95. Tim Silver has been awarded the 2003 North Carolina Literary and Historical Association's Old North State Award for Nonfiction for his .77 intensely personal and readable history of Mt. Mitchell, the mountain range called Blacks, and the Toe River Valley. Mount Mitchell and The Black Mountains also includes personal journal entries, in which the author describes his own recent hiking and fishing visits into the region. In this way, Silver creatively and effectively makes his point: the people and environmental events of any period irrevocably impact the people and environment of the present. Fascinating human characters appear, and their stories are told, but the natural world is at the center of the book, and the history of the land itself is chronicled. Although he writes of the human impact on the Black Mountains, the author emphasizes that nature has been the most powerful force and that any human influence is secondary. He observes that there is a common misconception that the world was some sort of Eden before the advent of man and that native peoples lived in perfect harmony with the earth before the white man arrived. That has never been true. Silver contends instead that the story of nature is one of steady and relentless decline; nature has never been stable or perfect, and the earth was highly changeable before humans set foot on it. His inclusion of present-day journal entries about his personal experiences in the region is a distinctive approach. This technique evokes an emotional response, conveying the impression that the historical events that took place around Mt. Mitchell in another time are immediate and relevant to the present. The fact that his family originated in the Toe River Valley also contributes to the feeling that he has a personal stake in the history of the area. As he relates the story of the humans who impacted the region, he...