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"The Road to Wildcat recounts the travels in North Alabama in the mid-1920s of Eleanor Risley (suffering from diabetes), her asthmatic husband, Pierre, their dog, John, and a Chinese wheelbarrow named Sisyphus that held their travel goods. Advised to make the walking tour for improvement of their health, the group left Fairhope in south Alabama and walked hundreds of miles in the southern Appalachians for months, sleeping out under the stars at night, or in a canvas tent or an abandoned building, cooking their fresh-caught foods over campfires, and accepting the generosity and advice of the mountain people they met, some of them moonshiners and outlaws. During their sojourn across the rural wilderness, they enjoyed fiddling dances in rickety halls, joined Sacred Harp singers, learned about the grapevine telegraph, saw the dreadful effects of inbreeding, and attended "Snake Night" at Poesy Holler (a religious revival that included snake handling). Published in segments in the "Atlantic Monthly in 1928 and 1929 and then reorganized into book form, the travelogue is a colorful record of the culture, customs, and dialect of the southern mountaineers of that era.
About the author
In the brief time that she lived in Alabama, Eleanor de la Vergne Doss Risley (1867-1945) produced two notable volumes of sketches and stories that provide an insight into residents of Fairhope in south Alabama and the rural mountain communities and peoples of north Alabama. Her monograph
Real Fairhope Folks (1928) consists primarily of sketches originally written for
The Fairhope Courier from 1921 to 1924.
Summary
Recounts the travels in North Alabama in the mid-1920s of Eleanor Risley (suffering from diabetes), her asthmatic husband, Pierre, and their dog, John. First published in segments in the Atlantic Monthly in 1928 and 1929, the travelogue is a colorful record of the culture, customs and dialect of the southern mountaineers of that era.
