It has been 10 years since Jason Sanderson’s son Sam was lost at sea. Over the years Jason has moved from North Carolina to Kentucky and remarried, but he never really dealt with his grief and his wife’s New Age attempts to help him do so backfire. Sam’s lover Lory has also spent the last decade with her grief, hiding from the world in her father’s rural hotel. After Jason meets Lory, their stories and memories of Sam are told in a series of flashbacks. Both Jason and Lory head toward Grandfather Mountain and the celebration of the Harmonic Convergence Anniversary Gathering, hoping to find some kind of peace. The Motel of the Stars won the 2003 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction and was a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book.

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Posted: March 25th, 2009 under 2000-, 2008, Avery, McElmurray, Karen Salyer, Mountains.
Comments: none

Lawyer Deborah Knott is a modern southern woman, but as the only daughter of a notorious, retired bootlegger, she still has one foot in the traditions of the old south. After one of the local judges is particularly and unnecessarily harsh on one of her partner’s clients, she decides to run for a seat as district judge in Colleton County. The campaign is a hard one, but Deborah is also distracted by her large family and gets tangled up in trying to resolve the 18-year old unsolved murder of a neighbor. The first in the Deborah Knott series of mysteries, Bootlegger’s Daughter also won four of the major mystery awards: the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, & Macavity Awards.

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Posted: March 16th, 2009 under 1990-1999, 1992, Coastal Plain, Maron, Margaret, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series.
Comments: none

Set in 1929, Serena begins with timber-baron George Pemberton bringing his new wife from Boston to the North Carolina Mountains. The wife is the titular Serena, an ambitious and intelligent woman who is a good match for her husband and who quickly settles into life in the lumber camp. But as many of her material desires are met, she also faces dissatisfactions due to uncertain investors, the presence of Pemberton’s illegitimate child, and the U.S. government’s attempts to buy land to form Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Her ambitions and cruelty grow. In addition to portraying Serena as a Lady MacBeth-like character, author Ron Rash also presents a look at early environmentalism and shows the harsh and dangerous world of timber labor during the Great Depression. Serena was listed as one of the best books of 2008 by The New York Times, Amazon.com and Publishers Weekly.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: December 9th, 2008 under 2000-, 2008, Haywood, Historical, Mountains, Rash, Ron.
Comments: none

A four-year ban on hunting in the Powhatan Swamp is about to expire and the situation creates tension between local environmentalists and hunters. One of the people spearheading the conservation efforts is teenager Chip Clewt, a boy generally more comfortable with animals than with people. The controversy heats up after the disappearance of a graduate student who was working on tracking the local bears. Originally published in 1992, The Weirdo was that year’s winner of the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery.

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Posted: December 3rd, 2008 under 2000-, 2006, Children & Young Adults, Coastal Plain, Mystery, Novels in Series, Taylor, Theodore.
Comments: none

Randall Kenan introduced readers to the fictional town of Tims Creek in his 1989 novel A Visitation of Spirits and continued its story in his second book, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. Its twelve short stories are connected by the town, a cast of recurring characters, and the themes of death, sex, and poverty. The title story is a parody of a scholarly article, complete with a deceased fictional author and extensive footnotes. Let the Dead Bury Their Dead was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the Lambda Award.

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Posted: July 30th, 2008 under 1990-1999, 1992, Coastal Plain, Kenan, Randall, Novels Set in Fictional Places.
Comments: none

Maggie Delany’s husband Richard is killed when he tries to protect a drugstore clerk during a robbery. It seems that the case will be open-and-shut until a past acquaintance of Maggie’s joins the defense team and speculates that the shooting had more to do with Richard’s past experiences during the Vietnam War than random chance. As Maggie struggles to find the truth and uncovers details of her husband’s involvement with the war, she remembers and reflects on her own participation in the anti-war movement. The novel’s action takes place in the cities of Charlotte, New York, and Boston, as well as the jungles of Southeast Asia. Absolution was the winner of both the 2007 Novello Literary Award and Independent Publisher’s 2008 Gold Award for Best Fiction in the Southeastern Region.

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Posted: May 27th, 2008 under 2000-, 2007, Herin, Miriam, Mecklenburg, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Three of the four novellas in this collection are set in North Carolina. “He’s One, Too” is set in fictional Falls, N.C., which is probably based on the author’s hometown of Rocky Mount. The Practical Heart won the 2002 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for the best work of fiction by a North Carolinian.

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Posted: April 17th, 2008 under 2000-, 2001, Gurganus, Allan, Nash, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Set in the violent, lawless days just after the Civil War, this novel explores the deeply complicated questions about how the South would recover and adjust to new ideas about race and class. Daniel McFee, a former slave who had fought for the Union, has returned home to western North Carolina to become a sharecropper on land owned by his old master, Madison Curtis. Despite good intentions, both Curtis and McFee have trouble adjusting to this new relationship. It’s especially hard to make any meaningful progress when the whole region is overrun with violent vigilantes all too willing to take matters into their own hands. The novel is based in part on the author’s family history. Freedom’s Altar won the 1999 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for the best novel by a North Carolinian.

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Posted: March 13th, 2008 under 1990-1999, 1999, Historical, Mountains, Price, Charles.
Comments: none

Gap Creek follows a newlywed couple in Appalachian North and South Carolina in the early 1900s. Julie Harmon Richards, an independent hard-working woman, narrates the story of the difficulties she and her husband face just trying to get by. Battling fierce weather, personal tragedies, and thieves, this novel details the difficulties of mountain life. Morgan gives careful attention to the details of farm work, with a particularly memorable description of the butchering of a hog. Gap Creek was a selection of the Oprah Book Club in January 2000.

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Posted: March 13th, 2008 under 2000, 2000-, Avery, Historical, Morgan, Robert, Mountains.
Comments: none

Everyone in the small town of Orfax, N.C. is astir when local rock-and-roller Bobby Rex hits the big time with his song “Pally Thompson.” The only one who isn’t thrilled about it is Pally Thompson, who insists that she didn’t go nearly as far with Bobby Rex as the song would suggest. Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the novel follows Pally’s attempts to redeem her reputation, but is in effect a rich portrait of adolescent small town life in the postwar South. Fictional Orfax is about twenty miles from Greensboro, the author’s hometown. Bobby Rex’s Greatest Hit won the 1987 Sir Walter Raleigh award for the best work of fiction by a North Carolinian.

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Posted: March 13th, 2008 under 1980-1989, 1986, Children & Young Adults, Gingher, Marianne, Guilford, Novels Set in Fictional Places.
Comments: none