Appalachian Mountain Girl

Appalachian Mountain Girl is a sensitive and beautifully written autobiographical account of a childhood in the coalmine district of Depression-era Kentucky. With humor and warmth—but without sentimentality—Rhoda Warren recounts the lives of these mining people whose religion and family values buttressed and sustained them. As a young girl, Rhoda began to catch glimpses of the world outside her narrow mountain community through the stories in True Confessions magazine and the pictures in the Montgomery Ward catalog—which to her seemed like “visions of a fairy world.” When Rhoda married and moved to a small town in New York State, it seemed that her dreams of a better life had been realized. Yet scenes of Letcher always “hovered in the back roads of her memory.” When she revisited her homeland, this time as a New Yorker, Rhoda found that Letcher was no longer the place of her memories.

One woman’s “affecting and well-written” memoir of growing up with twelve siblings in rural Kentucky, and returning as an adult (Kirkus Reviews). Appalachian Mountain Girl is a sensitive and beautifully written autobiographical account of a childhood in the coalmine district of Depression-era Kentucky. With humor and warmth—but without sentimentality—Rhoda Warren recounts the lives of these mining people whose religion and family values buttressed and sustained them. As a young girl, Rhoda began to catch glimpses of the world outside her narrow mountain community through the stories in True Confessions magazine and the pictures in the Montgomery Ward catalog—which to her seemed like visions of a fairy world. Much later, after poverty drove her family to Wyoming and then Rhoda married and moved to a small town in New York State, it seemed that her dreams of a better life had finally been realized. Yet scenes of Letcher always hovered in the back roads of her memory. When she revisited her homeland, this time as a New Yorker, Rhoda found that Letcher was no longer the place she recalled—and in this vivid memoir, she contemplates the relationship between our past and our present and the ways that our childhood stays with us forever.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Mountain Girl" by Payne Erskine. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Elizabeth's idyllic life in the Appalachian mountains hides family troubles. Relatives and community alike shun her mysterious uncle and she wants to know why. Can she forge a connection with Uncle John and can she do it in time?

After rising from poverty to earn two Ivy League degrees, an Appalachian lawyer pays tribute to the strong “hill women” who raised and inspired her, and whose values have the potential to rejuvenate a struggling region. “Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.”—BookPage (starred review) “Poverty is enmeshed with pride in these stories of survival.”—Associated Press Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County is one of the poorest counties in both Kentucky and the country. Buildings are crumbling and fields sit vacant, as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women are finding creative ways to subsist in their hollers in the hills. Cassie Chambers grew up in these hollers and, through the women who raised her, she traces her own path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Chambers’s Granny was a child bride who rose before dawn every morning to raise seven children. Despite her poverty, she wouldn’t hesitate to give the last bite of pie or vegetables from her garden to a struggling neighbor. Her two daughters took very different paths: strong-willed Ruth—the hardest-working tobacco farmer in the county—stayed on the family farm, while spirited Wilma—the sixth child—became the first in the family to graduate from high school, then moved an hour away for college. Married at nineteen and pregnant with Cassie a few months later, Wilma beat the odds to finish school. She raised her daughter to think she could move mountains, like the ones that kept her safe but also isolated her from the larger world. Cassie would spend much of her childhood with Granny and Ruth in the hills of Owsley County, both while Wilma was in college and after. With her “hill women” values guiding her, Cassie went on to graduate from Harvard Law. But while the Ivy League gave her knowledge and opportunities, its privileged world felt far from her reality, and she moved back home to help her fellow rural Kentucky women by providing free legal services. Appalachian women face issues that are all too common: domestic violence, the opioid crisis, a world that seems more divided by the day. But they are also community leaders, keeping their towns together in the face of a system that continually fails them. With nuance and heart, Chambers uses these women’s stories paired with her own journey to break down the myth of the hillbilly and illuminate a region whose poor communities, especially women, can lead it into the future.

Dorie's story begins with her childhood on an isolated mountain farm, where we see first-hand how her parents combined back-breaking labor with intense personal pride to produce everything their family needed--from food and clothing to tools and toys--from the land. Lumber companies began to invade the mountains, and Dorie's family took advantage of the financial opportunities offered by the lumber industry, not realizing that in giving up their lands they were also letting go of a way of life. Along with their machinery, the lumber companies brought in many young men, one of whom, Fred Cope, became Dorie's husband. After the lumber companies stripped the mountains of their timber, outsiders set the area aside as a national park, requiring Dorie, now married with a family of her own, to move outside of her beloved mountains.

"The Mountain Girl" is a novel written by the American author Payne Erskine. It was first published in 1909. The story is set in the Appalachian Mountains and revolves around the character of "Little Sister," a young mountain girl who lives a simple life in the rural, remote region. When she encounters a group of outsiders from the city, her world is transformed, and she is exposed to new experiences and challenges. The novel explores themes of culture clash, love, and the clash between traditional and modern ways of life. Payne Erskine was known for her works that often depicted life in the Appalachian region and portrayed the struggles and triumphs of the people who lived there. "The Mountain Girl" is one of her notable works, capturing the essence of rural mountain life and the complexities of human relationships.

The autobiography of Rhoda Bailey Warren, who grew up near the coal mines of Corbin Glow, Kentucky, where her father was a miner. Warren's family later moved to Letcher, Kentucky, and Warren herself eventually moved to New York State and married.