Tag Archives: Award

by | March 13, 2008 · 9:58 am

Robert Morgan. Gap Creek. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2000.

Gap Creek follows a newlywed couple in Appalachian North and South Carolina in the early 1900s. Julie Harmon Richards, an independent hard-working woman, narrates the story of the difficulties she and her husband face just trying to get by. Battling fierce weather, personal tragedies, and thieves, this novel details the difficulties of mountain life. Morgan gives careful attention to the details of farm work, with a particularly memorable description of the butchering of a hog. Gap Creek was a selection of the Oprah Book Club in January 2000.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000, 2000-2009, Avery, Historical, Morgan, Robert, Mountains

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by | · 9:58 am

Allan Gurganus. Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. New York: Knopf, 1989.

Ninety-nine year old Lucy Marsden spins an epic tale that covers the Civil War, slavery, marriage, and death. With an energetic and humorous style, she tells the story of her remarkable life. Married at fifteen to a Confederate veteran thirty-five years her senior, Lucy has survived long enough to be the oldest living Confederate widow. The novel alternates between past and present, telling the story of Captain Marsden’s experiences in the war, Lucy’s childhood, her close friendship with a former slave, and her life at present, where she is living in a nursing home in fictional Falls, N.C., a town in the eastern part of the state probably based on the author’s hometown of Rocky Mount.  The book was made into a movie/miniseries in 1994.

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All won the 1990 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 1980-1989, 1989, Gurganus, Allan, Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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by | · 9:58 am

Marianne Gingher. Bobby Rex’s Greatest Hit. New York: Atheneum, 1986.

Everyone in the small town of Orfax, N.C. is astir when local rock-and-roller Bobby Rex hits the big time with his song “Pally Thompson.” The only one who isn’t thrilled about it is Pally Thompson, who insists that she didn’t go nearly as far with Bobby Rex as the song would suggest. Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the novel follows Pally’s attempts to redeem her reputation, but is in effect a rich portrait of adolescent small town life in the postwar South. Fictional Orfax is about twenty miles from Greensboro, the author’s hometown. Bobby Rex’s Greatest Hit won the 1987 Sir Walter Raleigh award for the best work of fiction by a North Carolinian.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 1980-1989, 1986, Children & Young Adults, Gingher, Marianne, Guilford, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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by | · 9:58 am

Judy Goldman. The Slow Way Back. New York: William Morrow, 1999.

Thea McKee is a woman with a successful radio call-in show in Charlotte, N.C., when she receives in the mail a packet of letters written by her grandmother more than 60 years ago. As she seeks help understanding the letters — they are written in Yiddish — Thea reflects upon three generations of her Southern Jewish family. The letters ultimately reveal family secrets that allow Thea to resolve long unanswered questions about her childhood. The Slow Way Back won the 2000 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for the best work of fiction by a North Carolina writer.

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1999, Goldman, Judy, Mecklenburg, Piedmont

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by | · 9:58 am

Charles Frazier. Cold Mountain. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997.

Cold Mountain is the story of Inman, a deserter from the Confederate Army, and his long journey home to the mountains of North Carolina during the last year of the Civil War. The novel alternates between Inman’s struggles and those of Ada, who is at home near Cold Mountain and is able to get by only with the help of Ruby, a mountain woman unafraid to fend for herself. Cold Mountain, winner of the National Book Award in 1997, has been praised for its accuracy in portraying geographical and horticultural details, as well as the particulars of nineteenth-century life in the North Carolina mountains. The book also inspired the 2003 Oscar-winning film of the same name.

Cold Mountain won the 1997 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1997, Frazier, Charles, Haywood, Historical, Mountains

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by | · 9:58 am

Pamela Duncan. Plant Life. New York: Delacorte Press, 2003.

This novel is largely the story of a group of women who work in the textile mill in the fictional Piedmont town of Russell, N.C. The town and its residents are seen through the fresh perspective of newly divorced Laurel Granger, who has returned to Russell after fifteen years in Las Vegas. As Laurel struggles to cope with her aging mother and begins to find romance again, she is comforted by the friendship and understanding of the women she works alongside at the mill. Plant Life won the 2003 Sir Walter Raleigh award for the best work of fiction by a North Carolina author.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2003, Duncan, Pamela, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont

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by | · 9:58 am

Daphne Athas. Entering Ephesus. New York: Viking, 1971.

The Bishop family has fallen on hard times. Forced to leave their large and comfortable house in Connecticut, they move to the small, provincial town of Ephesus, a fictional Piedmont town based on Chapel Hill. In the midst of the chaos of relocating and adjusting to life in the south, the lively Bishop daughters — Irene, Urie, and Loco Poco — are just entering adolescence. Their thoughts and observations enliven the novel, which is set amidst depression and war in the 1930s and 1940s. There is a small community named Ephesus in Davie County, but this novel is clearly set in a Piedmont college town. Entering Ephesus won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for the best work of fiction by a North Carolinian in 1972.

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Filed under 1970-1979, 1971, Athas, Daphne, Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Orange, Piedmont

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