by Laura DeNooyer | Jan 11, 2022 | Book Reviews
When I first picked up Under a Cloudless Sky, I thought it was about the 1920 miners’ massacre known as the Battle of Matewan, a shootout between local coal miners and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency in West Virginia. Ten men died as a result of this fight for...
by Laura DeNooyer | Jan 4, 2022 | Book Reviews
Will the real Mack Strum please stand up? While reading Chris Fabry’s A Piece of the Moon, I stumbled across this character Mack Strum, a country singer. The story’s setting is a country radio station in rural West Virginia. Waite Evers, the manager, recites...
by Laura DeNooyer | Dec 7, 2021 | Book Reviews
Like millions of others, I long ago fell in love with the book Christy by Catherine Marshall. I read it in middle school about five years after publication (1967). That was my first introduction to the Smoky Mountains, delving into 1912 southern Appalachia,...
by Laura DeNooyer | Nov 30, 2021 | Book Reviews
When my daughter got married, I made a recipe book as a gift. In scrapbook fashion, I assembled recipes and anecdotes that told the story of our family in terms of special meals, snacks, holidays, and celebrations. I had a blast making it, recalling the times we...
by Laura DeNooyer | Nov 23, 2021 | Book Reviews
In Michigan in the 1960s, I was a kid with little understanding of the world outside my small town other than TV news footage of hippies, flower children, race riots, and the Vietnam War. I attended kindergarten with both black and white children, with no clue why...
by Laura DeNooyer | Nov 16, 2021 | Book Reviews
A funny thing about stories–within ten minutes of starting a good one (whether reading a book or watching a show), I’m compelled to find out what happens to the protagonist as soon as possible. I’d be perfectly fine without meeting said hero or heroine, but once...
