Tag Archives: Farming

Denise Hunter. Sweetwater Gap. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2008.

When Josie Mitchell left her mountain home six years ago she never intended to return. But it has been a rough couple of years at her family’s Blue Ridge Apple Orchard.  When Josie finds out that her sister is pregnant with twins she heads back to help out…and to try and convince her sister to sell the business. Her visit is marked by unresolved guilt, secrets that she feels she cannot share, and tension with the attractive orchard manager, Grady.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Hunter, Denise, Mountains, Religious/Inspirational, Romance/Relationship

Michael Phillips. Angels Watching Over Me. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2003.

Katie Clairborne and Mary Ann (Mayme) Jukes were born in the same county less than a year apart, but they did not meet until the Civil War brought tragedy to both their lives. Mayme, a slave on a plantation outside the fictional Greens Crossing, is the lone survivor of an attack by marauding Confederate deserters. She flees and eventually finds herself at Rosewood, the plantation owned by the Clairbornes. Unfortunately, the same gang attacked Rosewood and everyone is dead except Katie. The girls decide to run the plantation and keep the deaths a secret to protect Katie’s claim on the land. They form a strong bond and, through toil and faith, they survive together. This is the first book in the Shenandoah Sisters series of historical, faith-based novels.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2003, Historical, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Phillips, Michael, Religious/Inspirational

Elizabeth Van Loon. The Shadow of Hampton Mead. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1878.

The Hamptons live an Edenic life on their plantation the western North Carolina. Mrs. Hampton died young, but Mr. Hampton has had the pleasure of watching his children Walter and Norva grow to adulthood. The snake who enters this garden is Norva’s new husband Lawrence Hastings, a man she met in London. Hasting is lascivious and greedy, and his plot to seize the Hampton’s family’s wealth almost succeeds. The novel is thought to be set in Yancey County; the time is the early nineteenth century.

Check this title’s availability and access an online copy through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1870-1879, 1878, Mountains, Novels to Read Online, Van Loon, Elizabeth, Yancey

Barry D. Yelton. Scarecrow in Gray. New York: iUniverse, 2006.

Although many of his neighbors and relatives joined the Confederate Army, struggling Rutherford County farmer Francis Melton did not see that he had a personal stake in the conflict. He felt he was doing his patriotic duty buy selling his crops to the Confederacy for less than their worth. Eventually, however, he is convinced that he is duty-bound to serve and he leaves his wife and daughters to enlist. Francis and his conscripted friend, Whit Whitaker, face hunger, violence, danger, as they fight their way through the final year of the Civil War. Scarecrow in Gray is loosely based on the author’s great-grandfather’s service in the Civil War.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Coast, Historical, Mountains, Novels in Series, Rutherford, Yelton, Barry D.

Gloria Houston. Littlejim. Fairview, NC: Bright Mountain Books, 2008.

Littlejim wants nothing more than to earn the respect of his father, Bigjim. He is an excellent student, but his father does not see the value in school work and other such “tom-foolery.” Littlejim tries to prove himself in other ways, but he has no luck in demonstrating his worth to his father by working on his family’s farm or in his uncle’s sawmill. When an essay contest is announced, Littlejim decides to try to win both the contest and his father’s approval by writing about what it means to be an American. The people of his World War I-era Appalachian community provide the inspiration for his writing. Littlejim is based on the childhood of the author’s father and is the 2008 children’s focus novel for Western North Carolina’s Big Read Project, Together We Read. It has two sequels: Littlejim’s Dreams and Littlejim’s Gift: An Appalachian Christmas Story.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1990, 1990-1999, Children & Young Adults, Coast, Historical, Houston, Gloria, Mountains

Carolyn Rawls Booth. A Chosen Few. Chapel Hill, NC: Chapel Hill Press, 2008.

A Chosen Few is the third in Carolyn Booth’s trilogy of books that recount the struggles of rural, coastal North Carolinians during the 1920s and 1930s. While the plot revolves around the Ryan and McBride families and their relationships, much of the characters’ attention and activities are directed toward the the Penderlea Homestead Farms and other New Deal politics/projects of the Great Depression. The brainchild of Wilmington businessman Hugh MacRae, the Penderlea Homesteads were meant to be part of a cooperative, self-sufficient “farm city” in Pender County that would provide resettlement and relief for bankrupt farmers. The author was born in Bladen County and her family lived on a Penderlea Homestead until 1939; A Chosen Few is loosely based on her family and its experiences.

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

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Bladen, Booth, Carolyn Rawls, Coast, Coastal Plain, Historical, Novels in Series, Onslow, Pender

Waldron Baily. The Homeward Trail. New York: W. J. Watt & Co., 1916.

David Simmons and Ruth Swaim were childhood playmates, growing up on adjacent farms by the Yadkin River. Their parents assumed that the young people would some day wed, but when David bungles a sale of Mr. Swaim’s apples, he leaves the area. David’s plan is to earn the money to repay Mr. Swaim. Thus begin a picaresque tale in which David encounters an escaped Union prisoner and an Indian princess. David enjoys his time among the Croatan Indians (Lumbees) and comes to love the Princess Elizabeth. That in itself is a complicated situation, but the plot thickens when the Union soldier turns up where Ruth is staying and tells her about David’s new love. Ruth goes to David, and overhears David confess to Elizabeth his prior relationship with Ruth. Ruth and David recognize that their future is together, but leaving the Croatan settlement proves difficult.

Check this title’s availability and access an online copy through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1910-1919, 1916, Baily, Waldron, Novels to Read Online, Piedmont

John Jordan Douglass. The Girdle of the Great: A Story of the New South. New York: Broadway Publishing Co., 1908.

Although Colonel Watkins was at one time the wealthiest planter on the Pee Dee River, he now has little to pass on to his son Jerome. Jerome is determined to secure an education that will help him rise in the New South. With that education he can recover the family fortune and be able to ask for the hand of Maxine McDonald. Gabriel Allen stands in the way of Jerome’s goals. Things get worse for the Watkins family before they get better, but in the end Gabriel Allen shows his violent and treacherous nature, and Jerome and Maxine are married. Together they preside over the restoration and modernization of the plantation.

Check this title’s availability and access an online copy through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1900-1909, 1908, Anson, Douglass, John Jordan, Novels to Read Online, Piedmont

William Drysdale. Pine Ridge Plantation, or, The Trials and Successes of a Young Cotton Planter. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1901.

Colonel Andrews, a major North Carolina cotton planter, persuades Huntley Robertson, a hired hand on a farm in New York, to start out on his own near New Bern in 1900. With little money but lots of determination, Robertson becomes a successful planter.

Check this title’s availability and access an online copy through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Comments Off on William Drysdale. Pine Ridge Plantation, or, The Trials and Successes of a Young Cotton Planter. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1901.

Filed under 1900-1909, 1901, Coastal Plain, Craven, Drysdale, William, Novels to Read Online

Howard Owen. Rock of Ages. Sag Harbor, NY: The Premanent Press, 2006.

The story of Littlejohn McCain continues in this sequel to Owen’s Littlejohn (1992). Georgia, Littlejohn’s granddaughter, returns from New Jersey to her hometown in the fictional town of East Geddie, North Carolina. East Geddie, “where strawberries had grown and no tobacco was ever planted,” located in the sand hills of Scots County (Scotland County), greets Georgia with flashbacks from her past life on the farm, a family murder mystery to solve, and the prospect of true love.

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

Comments Off on Howard Owen. Rock of Ages. Sag Harbor, NY: The Premanent Press, 2006.

Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Owen, Howard, Piedmont, Scotland