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Zusatztext “A magnificent! and major! book.... A true addition to the literature of America.” -- The News & Observer “This is a heartfelt book that you quickly get comfortable in. As endearing as a friend.” --Edward Hoagland “An illuminating meditation on a singular American place . . . rich and bighearted." --Atlanta Journal Constitution "Offers deep! lingering pleasure."--Jonathan Harr “[A] beautiful reading experience.” --Stuart Dybek Informationen zum Autor John O'Brien was a reporter for The Post-Standard newspaper and Syracuse.com for 30 years, the last 10 as an investigative reporter. He's a co-author of the 1996 true-crime book Goodbye, My Little Ones. In 1993, The Post-Standard nominated him for a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering corruption in the local medical examiner's office. In 2017, he ended 35 years as a reporter to take a job as an investigator in Peebles' office. In 2018, the Syracuse Press Club inducted him onto its Wall of Distinction. Klappentext John O'Brien was raised in Philadelphia by an Appalachian father who fled the mountains to escape crippling poverty and family tragedy. Years later, with a wife and two kids of his own, the son moved back into those mountains in an attempt to understand both himself and the father from whom he'd become estranged. At once a poignant memoir and a tribute to America's most misunderstood region, At Home in the Heart of Appalachia describes a lush land of voluptuous summers, woodsmoke winters, and breathtaking autumns and springs. John O'Brien sees through the myths about Appalachia to its people and the mountain culture that has sustained them. And he takes to task naïve missionaries and rapacious industrialists who are the real source of much of the region's woe as well as its lingering hillbilly stereotypes. Finally, and profoundly, he comes to terms with the atavistic demons that haunt the relations between Appalachian fathers and sons.From Chapter 1 My Father Takes Me Home August 1952 On this sweltering day, I'm sitting on the front steps of our house on Greenway Avenue, in southwest Philadelphia. Through the screen door behind me, I hear my two brothers and two sisters complain about the heat. We have spent the afternoon filling paper bags with clothing, picking ripe tomatoes from the garden down the block, checking doors and windows, and scrubbing up. As soon as my father comes home from work, we will leave for Piedmont. I have filled buckets of water for Richard and Lady-my father's prized rabbit hounds that will stay here in the alley-and now all that's left to do is wait for him. Beyond the curb, the blacktop has become as soft as fudge. Up and down Greenway Avenue the oven-hot air shimmers, turning the colored girls jumping double Dutch into a wavering mirage. Waiting has always been hard for me, but waiting for my father is the hardest. At last he rounds the corner by Mazy's closet-sized grocery store, brown lunch bag in one hand and that tattered, oil-stained cap perched on top of his curly red hair. Once brown, the cap has faded into beige. He does not want a new cap; he brought this one from Piedmont when he moved to the city. As always, when he thinks he is alone and unseen, he frowns and stares into the middle distance-a worried man. No one in the world walks like him; each foot flares out wide to either side, ducklike. My father is a sailor on a ship at sea. Jumping up I shout, "It's him," and everyone flies around- double-checking windows and doors, turning the water off, unscrewing fuses. After one last look at Lady and Richard we stampede to the old box-turtle Plymouth. Inside the car, my younger brother David begins a litany of good-bye. It's "Good-bye, house, good-bye, porch, good-bye, Beauty"-the striped cat on the porch-"good-bye, Richard, good-bye . . ." Then older brother Patrick snaps, "Shut up, you idj...
