5 books
Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver took David Copperfield, moved it to Lee County in the far southwest corner of Virginia, and let Dickens do the work. Damon Fields, called Demon, is born on the floor of a single-wide to a teenage mother who’s already…
Daryl Gregory
The Birch family has kept a covenant with something living in a cave on their mountain in the Smokies since the 1930s. Each generation supplies a girl who goes into the dark to receive from it, and Stella was the…
Maggie Stiefvater
June Hudson runs the Avallon, a grand hotel built over mineral springs in the West Virginia mountains, and she came up from the hollers to do it. In 1942, the State Department requisitions the place to intern Axis diplomats and…
Rosalie Haizlett
With luck, Tiny Worlds will trigger FOMO—and point you toward the miraculous web of beauty seen at foot level and strolling speed. Plagued by chronic migraines as a teenager, West Virginia watercolorist Rosalie Haizlett started taking long walks in nature…
Earl Swift
Virginian Earl Swift loves the Appalachian Trail. As a young man, he kept moving closer and closer to it, as if inching toward a girl he wanted to know, eventually leasing “a goddamn eyesore” apartment because it was located at…
