I started She Walks These Hills today on the way back from Starbucks. I loved Sharyn McCrumb's book King's Mountain. As I read that book, I wished that I had written it. It is exactly the kind of book that I would like to write. I have high hopes for this new book.
I am reading it for our book club at Gallaher Village Library. It isn't for certain that I will attend the meeting, as our knitting group is leaving for NC on the same day. So it remains to be seen if we leave before the meeting. But I decided to read the book in hopes that I might be able to do both things that day. Imagine that, huh?
The author says that this story is partly based on a true event. Katie Wylie was kidnaped from Mitchell County, NC in 1779 and taken to a Shawnee Camp on the Ohio River. She escaped her captors and followed the deer paths that ran along the ridges above the rivers to return to her home area.
OK....I am still reading the book in November. We did leave for NC before the book club meeting. I like the book a lot. But what got my attention tonight is the idea that the people who lived in the Alps moved to many places....but they always chose to live in the mountains. She says that there is a word for Hillbilly's in every language ....a derogatory term describing people who choose to live on the mountain with freedom instead of living somewhere else where they might have more economic advantage. Somewhere "down the mountain".....
Mitchell County is shown on the map below outlined in red:
From Sharyn McCrumb's own website:
http://www.sharynmccrumb.com/she_walks.html
Historian Jeremy Cobb is backpacking on the Appalachian Trail, attempting to retrace the tragic journey of eighteen-year-old Katie Wyler, who was captured by the Shawnee after the massacre of her pioneer family in Mitchell County, North Carolina. In late summer, Katie escaped from a Shawnee village on the banks of the Ohio, and followed the rivers through the wilderness to find her way home - a brave journey that ended in sorrow. Jeremy, a city-bred graduate student with no trail experience, is determined to complete his scholarly quest, unaware that his journey will be both a trial of hardships and a mystical experience. He does not know that the spirit of Katie Wyler is still seen wandering the hills, trying to get home. Mountain wise woman Nora Bonesteel sees her every autumn "when the air is crisp and the light is slanted and the birds are still." Hiram Sorley, known as Harm, is also at large in the Appalachian wilderness. Sorely, who has escaped from the Northeast Correctional Center in Mountain City, Tennessee, is the focus of a wide-spread manhunt involving most of the area's law enforcement officers. There's just one problem: nobody wants him caught. Harm has become a folk hero. Sheriff Spencer Arrowood feels sorry for Harm, imprisoned for life for killing a hated local bureaucrat. There is even some doubt about Harm's guilt. Besides, the elderly convict has Korsakoff's syndrome, a disease that robs its sufferers of their recent memories. To Harm, it is always 1967. Harm doesn't even remember the crime. For Martha Ayers, who wants the job of deputy, catching Harm Sorely would be the best way to prove her fitness for the position. Harm, an Appalachian Don Quixote on the edge ofreality, meets both Jeremy and the still-wandering Katie Wyler on his journey back to a home that isn't there anymore. He is the "last moonshiner, " holding the dream of an unspoiled wilderness in the fragile web of his delusions. When he goes, it will be lost forever.
