Cold Mountain


Book Description

A wounded Confederate soldier treks across the ruins of America in this National Book Award–winning novel: “A stirring Civil War tale told with epic sweep.” —People Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves. His journey across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign. Meanwhile, the intrepid Ada is trying to revive her father’s derelict farm and learning to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away. As it interweaves their stories, Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic odyssey, hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.







The Civil War in North Carolina, Volume 2: The Mountains


Book Description

"You will perceive by this I am at least in the Confederate service.... Since I have been here I have had a severe sickness but am glad to say at present I am well though I fear my sickness would have incapacitated me for active service.... In all probability our regiment will be stationed here permanently for the winter to guard the bridge across the Watauga River..."--Private John H. Phillips, Company E, 62nd Regiment NC Troops, Camp Carter, Tennessee, October 13, 1862 This work presents letters and diary entries (and a few other documents) that tell the Civil War experiences of soldiers and civilians from the mountain counties of North Carolina: Alleghany, Ashe, Buncombe, Burke, Caldwell, Cherokee, Clay, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, McDowell, Macon, Madison, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Surry, Transylvania, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yancey. The book is arranged chronologically, 1861 through 1865. Before each letter or diary entry, background information is provided about the writer.













The Forest City Lynching of 1900


Book Description

Politics in Rutherford County were heated a century ago: the developing textile industry, the growing population, an agricultural crisis and race relations inflamed everyone. Mills Higgins Flack, a leader of the Farmers' Alliance and the county's first Populist in the state House, was allegedly murdered on August 28, 1900, by Avery Mills, an African American. This book documents the murder and the lynching of Avery Mills. The author (Flack's great-great-grandson) considers the phenomena of racial lynching, the Populist movement in the county, the white supremacy movement of the state's Democratic party and the county's KKK activities.