A sanitized and cheerful pirate tale, with just a few scenes set at Topsail Inlet and Cape Fear. Kate tries to steer her father, Stede Bonnet, away from piracy, in part for his safety, and in part to speed her marriage plans. Blackbeard, a rival and sometime collaborator with Bonnet, complicates matters.
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Comments Off on Frank R. Stockton. Kate Bonnet: The Romance of a Pirate’s Daughter. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1914.
Filed under 1910-1919, 1914, Coast, Novels to Read Online, Stockton, Frank R.
In this version of the Lost Colony story, most of the English settlers are killed, but Virginia Dare survives. In 1607, she goes north to Powhatan’s country, but the Jamestown settlers never learn of her existence. The remnants of Manteo’s tribe become Christians, and Virgina marries Manteo’s son Iosco.
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Comments Off on E.A.B.S. (E. A. B. Shackelford). Virginia Dare: A Romance of the Sixteenth Century. New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1892.
Filed under 1890-1899, 1892, Coast, Novels to Read Online, Religious/Inspirational, Shackelford, E. A. B.
Although this novel is set in the mountains of western North Carolina, plantation slavery is presented is part of the local heritage and figures in the plot. The shoe is on the other foot when John Marshall returns to his hometown near Asheville in the 1870s. Northerners have come to this part of the South and they are making their presence felt through land purchases and business deals. His family home has been sold and is now a boarding house run by the optimistic and energetic Portia Van Ostade. Old racial and social attitudes are still alive, but the younger characters find romance across the sectional divide. The happiness of one young couple is threatened by a secret from the past.
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Comments Off on Payne Erskine. When the Gates Lift Up Their Heads: A Story of the Seventies. Boston: Little, Brown, 1901.
Filed under 1900-1909, 1901, Buncombe, Erskine, Payne, Mountains, Novels to Read Online
A simple novel of the late nineteenth century, crowded with good mountain lore. The story is a coming of age tale centering on a twenty-year old mountain girl’s attempts to avoid the situations and errors that have made her parents’ lives so unhappy. Many of the scenes take place around Asheville, but the action later shifts to Massachusetts.
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Comments Off on Maria Louise Pool. Against Human Nature. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1895.
Filed under 1890-1899, 1895, Buncombe, Coast, Mountains, Novels to Read Online, Pool, Maria Louise
As a housekeeper at a country place near Pine Cone (a fictional Southern Pines), red-haired Janice Gale becomes involved in the search for stolen Russian jewels. Trap doors, strange guests, and several murder attempts figure in the plot of this mystery.
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Comments Off on Katharine Newlin Burt. The Red Lady. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920.
Filed under 1920, 1920-1929, Burt, Katharine Newlin, Moore, Mystery, Novels to Read Online, Piedmont
Eight Boy Scouts from the North spend the summer hiking and camping in the North Carolina mountains. They encounter moonshiners, rescue two captives, and reform the area’s most notorious bootlegger. During the course of the book, a good bit of Scouting philosophy and practice is displayed.
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Comments Off on Herbert Carter. The Boy Scouts in the Blue Ridge, or, Marooned among the Moonshiners. New York: A.L. Burt Co., 1913.
Filed under 1910-1919, 1913, Carter, Herbert, Mountains, Novels to Read Online
The subtitle is a giveaway of the author’s intentions. This novel is a strong defense of slavery and the antebellum social structure of North Carolina. It is loosely based on the Theophilus Hunter Jr. family of Raleigh, and fictionalized versions of several North Carolina political figures appear in novel. Eugene Hall is the pseudonym of Emma Eugene Hall Baker.
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Comments Off on Eugene Hall. Vernal Dune: In Which Is Shown the End of an Era. New York: Neale Publishing, 1913.
Filed under 1910-1919, 1913, Hall, Eugene, Historical, Novels to Read Online, Piedmont, Wake
Mabel Gordon is a Southern girl whose family was ruined by the Civil War. A wealthy New Yorker takes Mabel under her wing. Mrs. Rowland pays for Mabel’s education, and Mabel serves the Rowland family as a secretary and nurse. Complications arise when Mrs. Rowland’s brother, Colonel Chester, woos Mabel. The colonel’s actions in the Civil War directly harmed the Gordon family, so Mabel’s heart is not easily thawed. The action moves back and forth between North Carolina and New York.
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Comments Off on Roberta K. Dunlap. Mabel Gordon. New York: J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Co., 1901.
Filed under 1900-1909, 1901, Dunlap, Roberta K., Novels to Read Online
Mr. Pendleton must have read the Bard of Avon because this book has many of the elements of a Shakespeare play: mistaken identity, confused lovers, a kidnapping, a child rescued from danger and raised by guardians. As a toddler, Corona is saved from death by the mountaineer Gideon McLeod. She grows up, happy, with the McLeod family in Lonely Cove until a journalist who’s touring the mountains plays with her heart and spreads lies about the family. One consequence of the journalist’s visit is that the botanist Edward Darnell hears about the flora, fauna, and family in Lonely Cove. Darnell, who was also adopted, is taken with Corona. As the plot unfolds, they find that they have much in common.
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Comments Off on Louis Pendleton. Corona of the Nantahalas. New York: The Merriam Co., 1895.
Filed under 1890-1899, 1895, Macon, Mountains, Novels to Read Online, Pendleton, Louis
Melodramatic story of Carol Darlington, a beautiful and intelligent member of Asheboro’s social elite, and Stephen Kaltenborn, an independent-minded Methodist minister. Carol and Stephen grow in their love and learn to appreciate the opinions and experiences of others. Their happy story is contrasted with that of Carol’s brother who struggles with alcoholism.
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Comments Off on Elmore Elliott Peake. The Darlingtons. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1900.
Filed under 1900, 1900-1909, Novels to Read Online, Peake, Elmore Elliott, Piedmont, Randolph
