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“An excellent portrait of an community and a means of prolonged gone, a lost America.”
–Charles Frazier
Against the breathtaking backdrop of Appalachia comes a rich, multilayered post—Civil War saga of three generations of families–their dreams, their downfalls, and their faith. Cataloochee is a slice of southern Americana told in the classic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner.
Nestled in the mountains of NEW YORK sits Cataloochee. In a time when “where you was created was where God wanted you,” the Wrights and the Carters, both farming families, happen to be the valley to escape the rapid growth of neighboring towns and also to have a few hundred acres all to themselves. But progress eventually winds its way to Cataloochee, too, and every year the population swells as more people come to the valley to stake their fortune.
Never someone to pass on opportunity, Ezra Banks, an ambitious son seeking some land of his own, arrives in Cataloochee in the 1880s. His first order of business is to marry a Carter girl, Hannah, the daughter of the valley’s largest landowner. Following that Ezra’s brood grows, as do those of the Carters and the Wrights. With hard work and determination, the burgeouning community transforms wilderness into home, to be offered through generations.
But the idyll is not to last, nor to be inherited: The government takes steps to relocate folks to make space for the fantastic Smoky Mountain National Park, and tragedy will touch one of the clans in a single, unimaginable act.
Wayne Caldwell brings alive the community’s historic struggles and close kinships over a span of six decades. Filled with humor, darkness, beauty, and wisdom, Cataloochee is a vintage novel of place and family.
From the Hardcover edition.
