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Zusatztext Asheville Citizen-Times Robert Morgan tunes the twangy talk of the mountains into stories that sweetly sing of the universal range of human emotion! from love to hate! doubts to perseverance....[He] has chiseled and sweated out hard-won stories that won't be readily forgotten by any reader. Informationen zum Autor An MD and researcher, Dr. Robert Morgan is especially interested in Egyptian history especially the Christian period. He believes in human rights for everyone, everywhere. Basic human rights that transcends international boundaries, laws and traditions. Klappentext From the bestselling author of Gap Creek, comes a breathtaking collection of stories about the lives and history of the settlers of the Blue Ridge Mountains.Struggling to survive in an ancient mountain landscape that alternately thwarts their efforts and infuses them with joy and vitality, the strong-limbed and strong-willed people of the Blue Ridge Mountains undergo the transition from ploughshares to bulldozers -- from the Indian skirmishes of the post-Revoluationary War era to the trailer parks of the present day. In these eleven first-person narratives, Morgan visits the themes that matter to all people in all places: birth and death, love and loss, joy and sorrow, the necessity for remembrance and the inevitability of forgetting.This is a moving tribute to that which is universal and eternal -- the majestic immutability of the earth and the heroic human struggle to live, love, and create new life. Chapter 1 Poinsett's Bridge Son, it was the most money I'd ever had, one ten-dollar gold piece and twenty-three silver dollars. The gold piece I put in my dinner bucket so it wouldn't get worn away by the heavy silver. The dollars clinked and weighed in my pocket like a pistol. I soon wished they was a pistol. "What you men have done here this year will not be forgotten," Senator Pineset said before he cut the ribbon across the bridge. "The coming generations will see your work and honor you. You have opened the mountains to the world, and the world to the mountains." And he shook hands with every one of us. I still had my dirty work clothes on, but I had washed my face and hands in the river before the ceremony. The senator was as fine a looking man as you're ever likely to see. He wore a striped silk cravat and he had the kind of slightly red face that makes you think of spirit and health. The senator and all the other dignitaries and fine ladies got in their carriages and crossed the bridge and started up the turnpike. There was to be a banquet in Flat Rock that evening to celebrate the road and the bridge. I shook hands with the foreman, Delosier, and started up the road myself for home. Everything seemed so quiet after the ceremony. The warm fall woods was just going on about their business, with no interest in human pomp and projects. I carried my dinner bucket and my light mason's hammer, and I thought it was time to get home and do a little squirrel hunting. I hadn't spent a weekday at home since work started on the bridge in March. Suddenly two big, rough-looking boys jumped out from behind a rock above the road and run down into the turnpike in front of me. "Scared you?" one said, and laughed like he had told a joke. "No,"I said. "We'll just help you carry things up the mountain," the other said. "You got anything heavy?" He looked at my pocket bulging with the silver dollars. I had my buckeye in there too, but it didn't make any sound. "Yeah, we'll help out," the first one said, and laughed again. Now I had built chimneys ever since I was a boy. Back yonder people would fix up a little cabin on their own, and make a fireplace of rock, then the chimney they just built of plastered mud and sticks. Nobody had the time or skill for masonry. Way back yonder after the Indians was first gone and people moved into...
