Retracing the Keowee Trail


Book Description

In Retracing the Keowee Trail, the author tells the story of the Cherokee Path that connected the low country of colonial Carolina with the mountain homeland of the Cherokee Nation. The Keowee Trail was a busy trading route for a burgeoning deerskin trade. Along this same path, epidemic disease made its way inexorably from the colony toward Cherokee society, reducing their population by more than half. Along this path, warfare was waged in both directions, by Cherokee war parties determined to defend their homeland and by settlers like the author's Scots Irish ancestors, evermore hungry for land. That ancestral history is an entry point into this larger narrative. A "deep map" approach to the Keowee Trail will hold together multiple lines of perspective, including memoir, family history, migration patterns, religious history, Indigenous wisdom, trauma theory, ghost stories, mythology, archeology, geography, the watersheds, and the flora and fauna of the Southern Appalachians.




Keowee Valley


Book Description

"A glorious debut from a gifted author." - Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Big Stone Gap and The Shoemaker's Wife On the edge of the wilderness, her adventure began. "Keowee Valley is a terrific first novel by Katherine Scott Crawford--a name that should be remembered. She has a lovely prose style, a great sense of both humor and history, and she tells about a time in South Carolina that I never even imagined." --Pat Conroy, bestselling author of The Prince of Tides and South of Broad. She journeyed into the wilderness to find a kidnapped relative. She stayed to build a new life filled with adventure, danger, and passion. Spring, 1768. The Southern frontier is a treacherous wilderness inhabited by the powerful Cherokee people. In Charlestown, South Carolina, twenty-five-year-old Quincy MacFadden receives news from beyond the grave: her cousin, a man she'd believed long dead, is alive--held captive by the Shawnee Indians. Unmarried, bookish, and plagued by visions of the future, Quinn is a woman out of place . . . and this is the opportunity for which she's been longing. Determined to save two lives, her cousin's and her own, Quinn travels the rugged Cherokee Path into the South Carolina Blue Ridge. But in order to rescue her cousin, Quinn must trust an enigmatic half-Cherokee tracker whose loyalties may lie elsewhere. As translator to the British army, Jack Wolf walks a perilous line between a King he hates and a homeland he loves. When Jack is ordered to negotiate for Indian loyalty in the Revolution to come, the pair must decide: obey the Crown, or commit treason . . . Katherine Scott Crawford was born and raised in the blue hills of the South Carolina Upcountry, the history and setting of which inspired Keowee Valley. Winner of a North Carolina Arts Award, she is a former newspaper reporter and outdoor educator, a college English teacher, and an avid hiker. She lives with her family in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she tries to resist the siren call of her passport as she works on her next novel. Visit her at: www.katherinescottcrawford.com.




Travels of William Bartram


Book Description

Reprint of 1791 ed.




Colonial and Revolutionary History of Upper South Carolina


Book Description

Filled with local stories and dramatic scenes of fighting from across many decades, J. B. O. Landrum's chronicle of South Carolina is a treasure of the past. The author is enthusiastic in presenting accounts which encapsulate the local Carolina spirit; tales of hardship amid an unforgiving wilderness, of brutal combat between the Native Americans and the white settlers, and of everyday living in the villages and townships of the various counties. War stories and dramatic events are commonly taken from recollections of descendants and written anecdotes; such sources make for a lively and thoroughly engaging history of how South Carolina came to be. By the time he wrote this history in 1897, J. B. O. Landrum was already respected as a writer and chronicler of the past. Locals in and around the Carolinas would, from time to time, send him pertinent material. This edition includes the original publication's maps of the locality, so that readers can understand where settlements stood in the grand scheme of things, and how troops moved around during the conflicts. For its unique storytelling and knowledge, this history retains much value for modern day readers.




Finding Birds in South Carolina


Book Description

Identifies 200 prime bird sites in South Carolina.




Cherokee Heritage Trails Guidebook


Book Description

Enriched by Cherokee voices, this guidebook offers a unique journey into the lands and culture of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in the mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. Stories, history, poems, and philosophy enrich the text and reveal the imagination of Cherokees past and present. 144 color photos.







River Teeth


Book Description

In his passionate, luminous novels, David James Duncan has won the devotion of countless critics and readers, earning comparisons to Harper Lee, Tom Robbins, and J.D. Salinger, to name just a few. Now Duncan distills his remarkable powers of observation into this unique collection of short stories and essays. At the heart of Duncan's tales are characters undergoing the complex and violent process of transformation, with results both painful and wondrous. Equally affecting are his nonfiction reminiscences, the "river teeth" of the title. He likens his memories to the remains of old-growth trees that fall into Northwestern rivers and are sculpted by time and water. These experiences—shaped by his own river of time—are related with the art and grace of a master storyteller. In River Teeth, a uniquely gifted American writer blends two forms, taking us into the rivers of truth and make-believe, and all that lies in between.