An excellent book, scholarly and very readable. the Melungeons are a fascinating people. VandeBrake does a very good job of explaining them and how they have appeared in the literature. I expect we'll hear and read a lot more from this author.

How They Shine: Melungeon Characters In The Fiction Of Appalachia by Katherine Vande Brake (Associate Professor of English, King College, Bristol, Tennessee) is the first critical study of Melungeon characters in written fiction. Focusing on the wealth of Melungeon culture and how the Melungeon people have been viewed through the ages, particularly through the eyes of writers who identify them with the virgin Appalachian ridges before European colonization, How They Shine is an ground breaking, seminal, scholarly analysis that takes apart stereotypes and delves into the heart of human perception. How They Shine is a remarkable, informative, superbly presented and persuasive literary account.

Katherine Vande Brake's How They Shine is at once a scholarly examination of the depiction of Melungeons in Appalachian fiction and a readable overview of the topic. Though Melungeons have been characters in Appalachian fiction for many decades, no one has yet analyzed the way in which these misunderstood people have been presented. In this book, the first to address the issue of Melungeons in fiction, Vande Brake has filled that gap.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. While Vande Brake imparts a great deal of information, her style is quite conversational. Reading the book feels like sitting at a kitchen table in conversation with an old friend over a cup of coffee. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading a good book about books or anyone who seeks information about the Melungeon people.

My mother, who was from North Carolina with relatives in the Appalachians, read The Jack Tales to my brother and me before we started reading for ourselves. She got really tired of doing so, because we'd ask for them over and over. Fairy tales are the deep learning of childhood, and to hear these stories written the same way our older relatives spoke was wondrous. The stories themselves are a celebration of Jack the hero and Jack the Trickster, told with plenty of humour to keep things interesting and in a voice both authentically American and of universal appeal. I'm delighted to be able to get my hands on a copy - this is a book well worth reading and preserving for the next generation of avid readers.

I found this book in the library of my elementary school around 1965. After I married and had children I had to have a copy of this book for them. They enjoyed Jack's adventures as much as I did. I'm going to purchase several more copies and I plan to keep one for myself and give others away. Read these tales yourself and you will want to do the same.

I first heard the Jack Tales when I was in the fourth grade back in the 1960's. Our teacher would read us a chapter once a week. I had to look good and hard to find a copy for my daughters they have enjoyed hearing about Jack.

By far, one of my favorite books for children. I love reading it to my babies. The text with the beautiful pictures will go with you in your mind forever...

This is a wonderful book. As an elementary teacher I especially enjoy reading it with my students and own a classroom set. It is a beautiful story of a teacher and contains lovely illustrations. It is a sweet depiction of schools and life long ago.

From the moment I was introduced to this book, I knew I had to have it. It is such a wonderful story of a woman who enjoyed learning and dreamed of travelling to the places she read about only to have circumstances prevent it. She did the next best thing - she became a teacher and inspired countless students to live their dreams. Every teacher should read this - it will reinforce the reasons you entered the profession.

Kephart's engaging, entertaining style does a terrific job of bringing realism to a heavily stereotyped people; his approach is balanced, illustrating the people's good and not-so-good characteristics with anecdotes (some hilarious) and facts. He provides historical and topological frameworks for the character of mountain people. He lived a bare-bones existence among them for several years and so his narrative is richer--and truer--than that of a drop-in-ask-get-out historian's. The book provides a realistic basis for understanding people of today's mountains, where personal background is often still important.

Kephart delivers the facts as they really were while avoiding any hints of "documentary reading". The story gives many real life events and the reader feels almost as if he's having a conversation with Kephart. A very vivid look into Appalachian life as it really was in the early 1900s.

I love Appalachia history and would rate this as my favorite book on the subject. I hated to see the book end!

good sons who didnot forget their up bring. could read more...

After reading this book I felt proud to be the daughter of one of the authors(Ed Morris) He has always inspired me and directed me in the right way. As you can see in this book that he and my uncles had a hard life and intended to use his life and the situations that came about to nourish his family. The book was one book of many biographies that I have read that you actually felt like you had lived this life. I loved the book and would recommend it to anyone to read. Of course being modest due to the fact that my dad and my uncles wrote it. I am very proud to be a Morris.

It was the first time I had ever been to the hollow in the narrow valley of Aaron's Fork, about 20 miles northeast of Charleston. It was way too cold for a Florida lad, accustomed to warm, sunny Februarys. The frost-painted grass under my feet made a loud crunching sound as we walked back to where the three room plank house and pole barn had sheltered the family. Everything seemed frozen in time, like a movie set from scenes shot before color graced the screens. As a guest of one of the Morris brothers, I felt like I had a front row seat in a replaying of the first part of that movie which ran some six decades ago. While "The Roads That brought Us home" is not a PBS documentary, it easily could be one in the making. Brothers Ed, David and Roger grew up among the poorest of the poor in rural West Virginia, yet each of them would climb well above the poverty line and rise to the top of their chosen professions. Their road began in Aaron's Fork with no well or even an outdoor toilet. Drinking water was provided by a spring that bubbled out of the ground and they "did their business" behind a large rock near a creek. It was years before they got a radio and in the early years received no newspapers or magazines to learn about the "outside" world. But one by one, they left Aaron's Fork and moved into mainstream America, their mixed personalities as mixed as the country growing up with them. Brother David made a career out of drinking from the government trough of Illinois, a quiet, devoted, likeable team player who worked for a time with a man who is probably most famous for being Monica Lewinsky's lover. Brother Roger is a marathon runner who has become an accomplished sophisticate, acting as Director of Public Affairs for DuPont Pharmaceuticals and a food critic (as well as a former wine columnist) for USA Today. Brother Ed became a college English teacher and long-time editor for Billboard magazine. He is probably one of the most honest observers of the follies of the human race, a truly funny vegetarian who attaches himself to common sense in its purest form. He hates everything from religion to sports, to dancing, to small talk, to pierced ears and tattoes. Far from being self-righteous, he is his own worst critic. A fourth brother, Darrell, who was the eldest, died before this book was written, but his life was clearly influenced by the others, as was their late mother, Mary Elizabeth, whose death in 1988 drew the three together again. In "The Roads That Brought Us Home" David, Roger and Ed speak to the reader as if he or she were the fourth person in the room, listening as the grown-up boys trade memories about their separate but overlapping lives. The book is their story, but it's also yours and mine.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FACINATED WITH SERPENT HANDLING.
I THINK THIS HAS TO BE THE BEST BOOK,IF YOU WANT AN HONEST
LOOK INTO THE LIVES OF SOME SINSERE JESUS LOVING PEOPLE AND THERE
LIVES.I LIKED THIS BOOK BECAUSE ALOT OF IT WAS WERITTEN IN THE WORDS OF SAINTS THEMSELFS.BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE.AND A GREAT BOOK,I HIGHLY RECCCOMEND THIS BOOK OVER OTHER BOOKS THAT I HAVE READ ON THE SUBJECT.PEACE BE.STEVE SPARKS

If only the whole world could experience the depth and passion of the faith of these people. Brown and McDonald do a superb job of segueing to the individual stories. The latter are the crux of the book. The accounts of and by "ordinary folk" like John Brown, Jamie Coots and Joe Elkins are fascinating. Will probably read this again and again. Perhaps even attend a service someday?

This is an excellent book. I liked it because it neither degraded nor exalted the followers of this faith, it was more like a documentary. Even though I am not a member of this faith I found this book very enjoyable to read. Extremely informative.

The story takes place in the northern part of Georgia in a small town not unlike some here in North Alabama. Sutter's Cross is a book one could feel free to recommend to his or her grandparents and grandchildren. Many of the characters introduced might well be found in your own town, or at least someone with a strong resemblance. One of the central characters is a man named Harley. He is new to Sutter's Cross and has an aura of mystery about him which is revealed at least to some extent as the story evolves. The story is interesting with some mystery and occasional humor. One important observation about the book is that we are able to see both flaws and good aspects of individuals in Sutter's Cross and see how the good of each character emerges for the benefit of the people of the town. I would say the book has a religious orientation with some good lessons for life.

What a great book Sutter's Cross is! It started off a bit slow, but then it picked up to a point where you couldn't put it down. It takes you through the whole emotional spectrum and I haven't stopped thinking about the book since I finished it a few days ago. It's a book that draws you closer to the Lord -- this book is a definite keeper!

Having been born and raised in Tennessee, I know places like the one called Sutter's Cross. It is vivid, colorful and interesting to read, the characters are there for you to meet and know. This is a great work for a first-time author and I would encourage everyone to enjoy it and wait for more of the same! I also recommend to those who like Sutter's Cross, the novel "This Rock" by Robert Morgan.

i HAD JUST handed in my MFA thesis to be published. I realized library priviledges I had had for 12 years would be gone in a couple weeks, I went to the music section of the FIU library and bumped into this book. I loved it, it loved me. I read it straight through--didnt go to work the next day. I have been studying and playing traditional American music for 40 years, and this is one of the best books on any level I have ever read. after talking about picking up the banjo for 40 years, I bought one right after I read this book and have bought another since.

So much of history and opinion about popular music is just congealed prejudice and wishful thinking. This is science and real life. The banjo is an African instrument, the traditional way of playing it is the African way of playing it. Not to speak of the non traditional post WWII guitar influenced Bluegrass way which simply adds as many blue and blues notes into the music as can be found.
What romanced me in this book is her interviews with African American banjo players from North Carolina and Virgina--some of whom have passed on since the book came out. The Photographs in there are great too.
Cece Also made a movie of these guys that was shown back when the book first came out. Is there any way to get it out on video for the world.
Buy this book, give this book away to your friends, make sure every library has this book, make sure this book is taught in the schools, This is it!

Cecelia Conway and Scott Odell should be awarded an enormous fellowship from the MacArthur or Guggenheim folks for additional research. This book merits a readership among anyone who so much as owns a "banjer." The accompanying CD (called "Black Banjo Songsters" and available on the Smithsonian/Folkways label) is a bit academic in its notes and its repetition of songs, but hearing the likes of John Snipes and Dink Roberts go to town is thrilling.

Today, there is a greater awareness of the fact that the banjo, so often identified as an American original, is in fact of African descent. Yet, with the exception of Dena Epstein's and Paul Oliver's pioneering research, there's has been little in the way of literature devoted specifically to the subject of the banjo's African and African-American heritage.

Cecelia Conway's AFRICAN BANJO ECHOES IN APPALACHIA fills this frankly embarassing void in banjo literature. Ms. Conway is a folklorist who, back in the 1970s, had done field work in the North Carolina Piedmont documenting some of the last bearers of the centuries-old African-American folk banjo tradition. In the beginning of the book, she introduces us to venerable African-American traditional musicians, whose music predates the blues and jazz, such as Dink Roberts, John Snipes and Joe and Odell Thompson (of all the aforementioned, fiddler Joe Thompson is the only one left to carry on the tradition, which he still does with great vigor and determination). From there, Ms. Conway launches into a fascinating, scholarly exploration of the history and evolution of the banjo.

This leads to the thorny issue of just how the banjo-- now considered, along with the fiddle and mountain dulcimer, to be the quintessential musical manifestation of white Appalachia-- was introduced and absorbed into the folk culture of the European-American communities of the Southern Mountains. Ms. Conway, in true scientific fashion, utilizes the historical record and empiric evidence to boldly challenge the conventional suppositions of her fellow scholars and folklorists, such as Robert Winans, Alan Lomax and Tony Russell, that the banjo entered the remote white southern mountain communities after the Civil War via traveling Minstrel shows and returning veterans. I'll leave you to read the book for Ms. Conway's theory on the subject.

All in all, AFRICAN BANJO ECHOES is well-researched, well-documented and well-written with loads of great illustrations. It would be a worthy addition to any library. I highly recommend it not just to devotees of the banjo and old-time music, but to anyone interested in the evolution of American folk culture and pop music.

I have three books in my cabin. The Holy Bible, The Complete Walker, and The White Mountain Guide. They are all you need.

i actually read this book for fun. my copy is extremely dogeared and annotated. it is my guide to life.

This is indeed the bible of White Mountains hiking, and is particularly recommended for anyone attempting a multi-day hike and/or a hike above treeline. Not much I can add to what others have said, except that for casual hikes and dayhikes you should really check out White Mountains Map Book of New Hampshire and Maine (Hiking Maps and Guides) by Steve Bushey, Angela Faeth (Illustrator), Steve Smith (Editor), which has a superb map and brief descriptions of the most popular day trails.

This collection of beautifully-crafted essays should be required reading in all Appalachian Studies classes. When readers tell me that they enjoy the natural history references in my Ballad novels, I urge them to read Scott Weidensaul. This wonderful book traces the natural history of the Appalachian Mountains all the way from Alabama to New Brunswick, Canada. In clear and lyrical prose, Weidensaul describes the formation of the mountain chain, touching on plate tectonics and the configuration of the prehistoric continents. Several chapters describe the plants and animals past and present which make for the unique ecosystem that is Appalachia: the use of the mountains as a migration path for birds and monarch butterflies; the 20th century chestnut blight which destroyed a species of tree, and the extermination of the passenger pigeon. With a keen understanding of nature and an obvious love of the land, Scott Weidensaul writes a guide to the mountains that is both informative and enchanting.

Scott Weidensaul has produced with "Mountains of the Heart" one of the finest examples of popular natural history writing I have ever seen. Thorough and authoritative, yet an easy read and quite engaging, he tackles an immensense subject with enthusiasm and obvious experience. Discussing the geology, ecology, fauna, flora, and conservation of the entire Appalachian mountain chain from central Alabama to Belle Isle, Newfoundland, you will never find a better book on the subject.

In reading the book I have learned so much about the natural history of this great eastern wilderness. Unlike many other natural history books which discuss faraway, exotic lands like Antarctica, Thailand, the Amazon jungle, or the Australian Outback, Weidensaul makes an area where I live in fascinating, bringing to my attention a variety of things I never even suspected, making this book a unique treasure. An area I took for granted, had lost my sense of wonder about now seems new and interesting to me. I am sure those reading this review would be similarly enlightened.

No you say? Do you know why leaves change color in fall, and how? Or why some trees turn one colors while others don't? Do you know what effect this leaf change has on the animal community in forests (ever hear of foliar fruit flagging?)? Did you know that many Appalachian tree species can survive winter temperatures as low as 80 degrees below zero, far colder than the mountains ever get today? Do you know what tannin is, and why trees produce it, and what effects this has on the forest community? Weidensaul makes what to me was a fairly mundane subject, perhaps suitable for a grade school science book, fascinating and weird. Trees are rightly one of the stars in this book, as Weidensaul recounts the sad tale of the American chestnut, the plight of the Fraser fir, the role of oaks in modern forests (and the potential problems their predominance could cause), and the magnifence of the white pine among many other plants.

However, animals receive a great deal of attention in this book as well, as by no means it is only about botany. Almost an entire chapter is devoted to the awe-inspiring annual hawk migrations down the length of the Appalachians. The many unique and highly local species of the mountains salamander fauna, one of the richest in the world, are recounted in great detail. Another unique fauna, the mussel fauna, again one of the world's richest, is also discussed, a subject not much to the lay naturalist. Weidensaul discusses some of the chain's fauna winners - such as black bears, successfully co-exisiting with people in crowded Pennsylvania, moose, which are rebounding in the northern Appalachians, and the raven, formerly a bird of deep wilderness but that one that is increasingly adapting to disturbed habitat - and its losers as well - such as brook trout, a species in decline in all but the most pristine streams, the red wolf, long gone from most of the range and yet to be successfully reintroduced, and the passenger pigeon, once a the most common land bird in the world, thriving on the vast crop of acorns in the Appalachians, now extinct.

A truly excellent book with nice illustrations in it, this will please any lover of natural history.

If someone assigned you the task of writing a history of the Appalachian Mountains, how would you organize it? Keep the information in its separate realms of geology, botany, zoology, and anthropology? Start in Alabama and work northward? Go state by state, province by province, and look at the smaller specific mountain ranges? Well, Scott Weidensaul has taken none of those approaches, thank goodness. His is an education by general themes: basic geology (for it must start there), bird migrations, habitat specialization, forestry, mammalian zoology, archaeology, pollination, extinction, survival. Each chapter has a pure focus; and yet all of the chapters somehow touch on all of these topics. Weidensaul's conversational style has the reader walking through the woods with him, chatting seemingly aimlessly, all the time seeing and learning about the life that abounds. Gems of detail sneak up on us while we read. If you travel 1000 feet up, the habitat and ecosystems change as if you had traveled 100 miles north. Wow. And then there are the interspecies connections, some well-known and some new to us: squirrels and oaks, oaks and gypsy moths, migratory birds and fatty fruits, white pines and ship masts, bears and wetlands, fishers and porcupines, crossbills and spruces. The natural world makes sense after reading this book. Highly recommended for naturalists everywhere and mandatory reading for residents of the Appalachian states and provinces.