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NON-FICTION Agatahi: The Cherokee Trail of Tears: A People’s Resistance Against the Forced Removal from their Southeast Homeland as Related in their Own Words by W. Jeff Bishop. Newnan, Georgia: Boll Weevil Press, 2017. 247 pages with a bibliography and maps. Trade paperback, $19.99. This is arguably one of the most important non-fiction books about our region published this year. The result of meticulous research, this book brings together for the first time an array of grassroots testimony from the Cherokees removed from the Southern Appalachians to Oklahoma in the 1830s. Their removal was ordered by President Andrew Jackson against...

Fiction The Dead Shall Rise: A Tale of the Mountains by Melanie K. Hutsell. Knoxville, Tennessee: Celtic Cat Publishing, 2016. 189 pages. Trade paperback, $15.00. Melanie Hutsell was born in Kingsport, Tennessee, and now resides in Maryville, but also spent important time in Union and Rhea Counties, also in Tennessee. She did undergraduate work at the University of North Carolina, and has an MFA from Indiana University. Although this is her first novel, Hutsell has been active in regional writing circles for some time, and her poetry and prose have been published on line and in print. A draft of...

NOVELS   Witchy Eye by D. J. Butler. New York: Baen/Simon & Schuster, 2017. 561 pages. Hardback in dust jacket, $25.00.   This is a fantasy novel “presenting an alternative history for North America where Appalachian folk magic has shaped the landscape and society.” The protagonist is a fifteen-year-old girl with an eye that can hex. She struggles with a multitude of characters who are not-quite human in a variety of ways. “A great ride that also manages to cover some serious cultural terrain.” – Charles E. Gannon. “Excellent book. Impressive creativity and depth of world building. Dave Butler is...

NON-FICTION A History of Transportation in Western North Carolina: Trails, Roads, Rails & Air by Terry Ruscin. Charleston, South Carolina: History Press, 2016. 271 pages with notes, bibliography, index, many photos, and a foreword by Robert Morgan. Trade paperback, $21.99. Robert Morgan concludes his foreword by writing; “[Ruscin’s] deeply researched, vivid account brings this history alive as no one else has. From Indian trails to stagecoach, steamboat, railroad and jet airplanes, this is an account of the Southern Appalachian region as only he can tell it.” Stan Shelley writes, “Too many local histories are really folklore put into print. Not...

NON-FICTION The Bloody Seventh: West Virginia’s Banner Regiment of the Civil War, From Antietam and Gettysburg to the Surrender at Appomattox by Matthew A. Perry. Kenova, West Virginia: self-published, 2017. 276 pages with photos, maps, charts, notes, and bibliographies. Trade paperback. $15.00   After publishing two books last year on the Civil War in West Virginia, one on a Union unit and another on a Confederate force, Perry here tackles the West Virginia regiment that fought for the Union that is widely considered the most active during the war. This regiment consisted, as was the standard practice, of ten companies, each...