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978-0-89587-178-7
0-89587-178-5
$17.95 paperback
6" x 9"
335 pages
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The Hinterlands is the
story of a family who found, marked, and paved their way into America's
eastern frontier. Unfolding in the voices of three generations of
mountaineer storytellers who specialize in keeping listeners on the edge
of their seats, this is fiction that plunks us down right into the thick
of pioneer life.
In 1772, an adventurous
teenager named Petal ran off with a handsome homesteader on his way to
the new frontier in Tennessee. Decades later, Petal spins a hair-raising
tale for her grandchildren. She includes all the grittiest details of
setting up housekeeping with what she carried from home on her back, of
birthing her first baby while staving off a panther, of living in the
middle of nowhere--with nary a known neighbor.
In 1816, Petal's grandson
Solomon and a starved pig named Sue tracked the best route down off the
mountain to market. He tells his grandson of his panther, not forgetting
to mention his run-ins with snakes and spiders, with thorny thickets and
what was hidden within them.
In 1845, Solomon's son David,
inheritor of the family bent for roadbuilding, took on linking two
mountains with a turnpike. Despite one mountain's mighty efforts to stop
him, his feat marked the beginning of the wilderness's end.
Based on the author's own
family stories, The Hinterlands is both rollicking folk history
and riveting adventure fiction. Robert Morgan's three gifted
storytellers tell it like it was--and with a vengeance.
about the author
Robert Morgan was raised on land in the Carolina Blue Ridge
mountains settled by his Welsh ancestors. Author of four novels, nine
collections of poetry, and two collections of short fiction, Morgan has
taught English at Cornell University since 1971.
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