To Make My Bread follows the McClure family during the years 1900-1929.  Initially, they are mountaineers, self-sufficient on their small plot of land.  Most of their neighbors live as they do, except for the Swains, who own the store in their community.  When the family is swindled out of their land by timber speculators, they move to a mill town forty miles away.

Not all family members adjust to the move.  The two younger children, John and Bonnie become the primary breadwinners, and they are radicalized by their experiences. Bonnie also struggles with the conflict between the demands of industrialized work and traditional expectations for women.  She becomes an important figure in the nascent labor movement in the town.

Part family saga, part political novel, To Make My Bread is one of six novels from the 1930s  based on the Gastonia textile strike of 1929.  The book has been the subject of academic study, and it is still in print from the University of Illinois Press.

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

Posted: October 13th, 2009 under 1930-1939, 1932, Gaston, Historical, Lumpkin, Grace, Mountains, Piedmont.
Comments: none

In the second book in the Laura Fleming mystery series, Laura and her husband Richard return to the small town of Byerly for her family reunion. Her calm vacation is quickly livened up with amateur sleuthing when a stranger is shot to death at the town’s mill and she discovers that her aunt is being blackmailed.

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

Posted: April 4th, 2009 under 1990-1999, 1994, Catawba, Kelner, Toni L. P., Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Laura Fleming left North Carolina years ago to attend MIT, but is summoned back to her western North Carolina hometown when her grandfather is badly injured in an accident at the town’s mill. But was her Paw’s “accident” really an attempt on his life? Laura (or Laurie Ann, as her family calls her) sees connections between his case and the murder of a local woman. Although she has her hands full investigating the incident, she also has to deal with a slew of her kooky relatives. This is the first of the Laura Fleming Mysteries, all of which are set in the fictional town of Byerly.

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

Posted: February 17th, 2009 under 1990-1999, 1993, Kelner, Toni L. P., Mountains, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series.
Comments: none

Littlejim wants nothing more than to earn the respect of his father, Bigjim. He is an excellent student, but his father does not see the value in school work and other such “tom-foolery.” Littlejim tries to prove himself in other ways, but he has no luck in demonstrating his worth to his father by working on his family’s farm or in his uncle’s sawmill. When an essay contest is announced, Littlejim decides to try to win both the contest and his father’s approval by writing about what it means to be an American. The people of his World War I-era Appalachian community provide the inspiration for his writing. Littlejim is based on the childhood of the author’s father and is the 2008 children’s focus novel for Western North Carolina’s Big Read Project, Together We Read. It has two sequels: Littlejim’s Dreams and Littlejim’s Gift: An Appalachian Christmas Story.

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

Posted: November 7th, 2008 under 1990, 1990-1999, Children & Young Adults, Coast, Historical, Houston, Gloria, Mountains.
Comments: none

This is a coming-of-age novel centering on Victor Carter, a high school boy who lives in the fictitious Piedmont town of Hopkinsville.  Victor is a very good golfer and a serious, reliable young man.  He hopes to be a Methodist minister and is studying theology with his pastor.  Taking a summer office job at his grandfather’s lumber company exposes Victor to attitudes and situations he has not previously encountered.  He feels pulled by the varied expectations that the adults in his life have for him, and he struggles to find his own sense of justice in a small town that harbors racism, economic blackmail, and a social structure that doesn’t welcome change. The book is set in the late 1940s.

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

Posted: October 29th, 2008 under 2000-, 2007, Clark, Henry, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont.
Comments: none

This part-memoir, part-novel alternates the story of Buddy, a southern boy growing up in the 1940s, with a fictional recreation of the lives of Lea and Amos, Buddy’s Cherokee ancestors. Through the two stories readers can learn about the enslavement of Native Americans, mill village life, and mid-twentieth century Southern popular culture.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

Posted: May 29th, 2008 under 2000-, 2006, Cabarrus, Historical, Piedmont, Rowan, Strickland, Buddy.
Comments: none

This novel follows Selena “Sippy” Wright as she joins the workforce at the tender age of twelve. Work as a “linthead’ in a cotton mill in Gastonia is hard, but Sippy makes lifelong friends and comes to see her own strengths. The hardships of early twentieth century mill life are vividly portrayed, but this is a book in the Oprah model–grit, good sense, and loving friends and family help a young girl grow in wisdom and happiness. This is the second Sippy Wright novel; Singer of an Empty Day (published in 1997) told the story of Sippy’s early life in a small mountain community.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Catalog.

Posted: May 6th, 2008 under 2000-, 2006, Gaston, Piedmont, Scearce, Flora Ann.
Comments: none

When the textile mill in the fictional Piedmont town of North Fork, North Carolina goes bankrupt, Amy Warren is determined to reopen the mill and reinstate jobs for the people in her town. But Zack St. Etienne, a successful European buinessman, arrives in Norfolk with other plans for the mill. Upset by the obstruction of her goal, Amy must also come to terms with the romance that develops with Zack.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

Posted: April 17th, 2008 under 2000-, 2007, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont, Rice, Patricia, Romance/Relationship.
Comments: none

The narrator of this novel, twelve-year-old Raybert Williams Jr., lives in Ellenton, a fictional North Carolina mill town in 1968. Raybert’s mother and father, each with deep problems of their own, teeter between responsible parenting and neglect, while Raybert’s best friend Palmer faces an even tougher lot with an abusive stepfather and a potential sexual predator in the family. Raybert and Palmer find comfort in each other’s company, and in their shared fantasies of growing up and escaping Ellenton.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

Posted: March 13th, 2008 under 2000-, 2003, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Riggs, Jack.
Comments: none

Pick Cantrell, a successful but controversial editorial cartoonist, has just moved from New York to his hometown in North Carolina. In the course of adjusting to his new life, Cantrell learns about his family’s connections to area’s rich textile history, most notably his grandmother Lucy’s involvement in a mill workers’ strike in the 1930s. The novel is set in the fictional town of Eno, North Carolina, most likely based on Hillsborough, and includes scenes in Chapel Hill.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

Posted: March 13th, 2008 under 2000-, 2001, Marlette, Doug, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Orange, Piedmont.
Comments: none