Nonfiction: Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

Like most people, I have big holes in my knowledge of the world.  Drury and Clavin helped me fill some of those holes with their new biography of Daniel Boone, Blood and Treasure.  I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know who Daniel Boone was, and I definitely owned a faux coonskin cap[1] purchased at Chimney Rock (in the olden times when it was privately owned and they still had the hill climb race).  But I’ve never read a book about Boone as an adult, and there is a lot I don’t know about southern Appalachia’s frontier history, even though it is my history.

Drury and Clavin’s approach is perfect for me.  I’m not a big biography reader.  When I do read one, I prefer it devote ample page space to putting a person’s life into historical context.  Drury and Clavin do that—there is an entire chapter devoted to the French and Indian War that elides Boone altogether.  Ample page space given over to Boone’s time in the Yadkin Valley is equally welcomed by me, as a North Carolinian.

Country Noir: My Father Like a River by Ron Rash

My Father Like a River includes two short stories: the title story and the longer The Trusty.  The Trusty was also published in Rash’s short story collection Nothing Gold Can Stay.  It’s as good now as it was when I read Nothing Gold Can Stay, but I’m disappointed to see a story I already own and have read.  As is usually the case with Rash, both stories take place in the mountains of NC.

Fiction: Far from the Tree by Rob Parker, narrated by Warren Brown

When I say “country noir” in my blog subtitle, I am first and foremost talking about stories of my people—rural hillbillies from southern Appalachia.  But I am not just talking about that.  I can, have, and will read country noir set in the Ozarks, in the Texas Piney Woods, in the Rust Belt.  I have always contended those stories, and books telling versions of them, existed outside the U.S. as well.  I just haven’t known where to look.  I have also long contended that you can set a country noir in the city.  With Rob Parker’s Far from the Tree, I found a damn fine example of both.

The small town of Warrington, smack dab between Liverpool and Manchester in northern England, is roiled when a trench containing 27 bodies is discovered in a local forest.  Lead investigator Brenden Foley’s world is further rocked when he makes the first identification—his nephew.

Country Noir: The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly

It is rare that a book is considerate enough to explain itself in one pithy paragraph.  It is ever rarer for it to be appropriate to start a review by quoting the last paragraph of a book.  But both are true for The Tilted World.

This story is a story with murder and moonshine, sandbagging and saboteurs, dynamite and deluge.  A ruthless husband, a troubled uncle, a dangerous flapper, a loyal partner.  A woman, married to the wrong husband, who died a little every day.  A man who felt invisible.

But most of all, this is a love story.  This is the story of how we became a family.

Music Monday: Solid Platinum Edition

Last week I talked about the independent country songs that have been certified gold over the last few years.  And things aren’t slowing down: since I published that post a week ago, I learned that Keep the Wolves Away by Uncle Lucius has been certified gold.  (If hits on a blog post are any guide, I shouldn’t have been surprised.)  Even more impressive than the songs certified gold, independent country artists are getting songs certified platinum.  Leading the way are Tyler Childers and Cody Jinks.  (S.O.B. by Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats was also certified platinum, but I already featured it here and it is really country-adjacent.)

Tyler Childers at Hinterland Music Festival, St. Charles, IA 8/4/18

Music Monday: Solid Gold Edition

Back when I first really started getting into independent country in the late aughts, most times I looked up an act’s touring schedule I found they didn’t make it out of Texas, Oklahoma, and maybe Arkansas.  Didn’t do me much good in North Carolina, but at least the good people of Texas were keeping the lights on for these folks.  And they still are, but the rise of independent country over the last decade has been extraordinary.  Country radio is still putridly awful on a historic level, but radio matters less than it ever did.

Photo credit Brad Coolidge and Khris Poage; originally posted at Saving Country Music

Music Monday: Hillbilly Blood by Chris Stapleton

He made us wait so long, and we really are not talking enough about Chris Stapleton’s new album. It is easy to take for granted the sheer quality of his admittedly limited output. But the list of artists with four albums in a row that strong is pretty much limited to the Turnpike Troubadours.

Music Monday: Bluegrass Edition

As the pandemic ever so slowly begins to recede, we could all stand to move into 2021 with a renewed commitment to the things we hold most dear. Less a New Normal than an Old Normal.

Let’s start with a little traditional music.

Fiction: Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail by T.J. Forrester

I posted on Facebook a couple times over the last few weeks about the mystery behind the man with the trail name Mostly Harmless who was found dead in his tent.  Vance John Rodriguez went into the woods to find himself.  It didn’t save him.  I’ve been reading Horace Kephart’s Camping and Woodcraft.  Going into the woods did save Kephart.  Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail is the story of Taz Chavis finding himself.  Recently released from prison, and after traveling to his hometown to settle his father’s estate, Taz sets off on a through hike of the Appalachian Trail to leave his life in the gutter behind.

In the vast wilderness of the Appalachian Trail, three hikers are searching for answers. Taz Chavis, just released from prison, sees the thru-hike as his path to salvation and a way to distance himself from a toxic relationship. Simone Decker, a young scientist with a dark secret, is desperate to quell her demons. Richard Nelson, a Blackfoot Indian, seeks a final adventure before taking over the family business back home. As they battle hunger, thirst, and loneliness, and traverse the rugged terrain, their paths begin to intersect, and it soon becomes clear that surviving the elements may be the least of their concerns. Hikers are dying along the trail, their broken bodies splayed on the rocks below. Are these falls accidental, the result of carelessness, or is something more sinister at work?

Nonfiction: Hill of Beans: Coming of Age in the Last Days of the Old South by John Snyder

Snyder grew up not far from me—just one county to the west, and even closer to the NC-SC line (albeit long before I was a twinkle in my mama’s eye)—so my interest was immediate and likely fulfilled regardless of quality.  But, mercifully, Hill of Beans isn’t lacking in any quality.

Snyder’s family wasn’t squalidly impoverished or even dirt-floor-poor, just the kind of poor just about everyone was back then before men like Snyder went out and created a whole lot of wealth that raised all boats.  He had the kind of early life a lot of us had back then—a stern father, an awesome uncle, a hateful old aunt.  He even, like me, left for a school in Chicago, although I made a much, much better decision.