Crick City is a small hick town. Violent, mean and dirt-poor, it's a place nobody wants to call home. But for homicide cop Phil Straker, it is home. And now someone—or something—is turning his boyhood town into a bloody sideshow of mutilation and gruesome carnage. They're called Creekers. Centuries old, driven by rage and lust for revenge, they move through the deep, dark woods—deformed, shadowy outcasts with twisted faces and blood-red eyes. Now, as the moon hangs low over their ancient house, they're gathering for a harvest of terror and death Crick City will never forget...

Along a five-mile stretch of creek that runs through East Sheridan Community lives a proud band of misfits who just want to fit into society. Brought to life in a collection of twelve short stories, the scrappy "Creekers" work hard to put food on their tables. But even as they face a harsh reality, the Creekers occasionally dare to dream of another life. Reverend Jones, a pillar of peace and harmony that unites East Sheridan Community, is competing in an annual charity race against notorious tough guy Roy Dean Youngblood for a lucrative prize. But after the race concludes, Youngblood surprises Jones with a prize he never expected. Dixie Hawthorne, the girl of Larry Kincad's high school dreams, has been living in the fifties for the past twenty-five years. When Larry meets her, he too is transported back in time. Chilled to the bones on tradin' night, young Billy Wesley finally summons the courage to set things straight in his dysfunctional family. In this charming collection of short tales set in the rural Midwest, a poor, hardworking class of people from the wrong side of the creek learns to embrace all life has to offer with passion, determination, and hope.

Linda Sue Preston was born on a feather bed in the upper room of her Grandma Emmy's log house in the hills of eastern Kentucky. More than fifty years later, Linda Scott DeRosier has come to believe that you can take a woman out of Appalachia but you can't take Appalachia out of the woman. DeRosier's humorous and poignant memoir is the story of an educated and cultured woman who came of age in Appalachia. She remains unabashedly honest about and proud of her mountain heritage. Now a college professor, decades and notions removed from the creeks and hollows, DeRosier knows that her roots run deep in her memory and language and in her approach to the world. DeRosier describes an Appalachia of complexity and beauty rarely seen by outsiders. Hers was a close-knit world; she says she was probably eleven or twelve years old before she ever spoke to a stranger. She lovingly remembers the unscheduled, day-long visits to friends and family, when visitors cheerfully joined in the day's chores of stringing beans or bedding out sweet potatoes. No advance planning was needed for such trips. Residents of Two-Mile Creek were like family, and everyone was "delighted to see each other wherever, whenever, and for however long." Creeker is a story of relationships, the challenges and consequences of choice, and the impact of the past on the present. It also recalls one woman's struggle to make and keep a sense of self while remaining loyal to the people and traditions that sustained her along life's way. Told with wit, candor, and zest, this is Linda Scott DeRosier's answer to the question familiar in Appalachia--"Who are your people?"

Ive often heard it said that everybody has a story to tell, and I know this is true, but I have found also that we all have a yearning to tell our story. Also, we have numerous ways to do it: through voice, writing instruments and machines, through photographic and digital images that we make or assemble, and also through the pattern of our living, and in the things that we create. Truman Fields is a many-faceted person, and he has left plenty of evidence of his interesting story to supplement what he tells us in this book. He has been a persistent student, teacher and craftsman, a successful businessman, and an award-winning tennis player, a superb craftsman, and a public servant. He was born in the center of the Appalachian coal fields, where he attended local schools until his father, perceived that Truman had a desire to learn more than might be possible locally, sent his reluctant son to Berea Foundation High School at the age of sixteen. There, in addition to the usual academic subjects, he began probing the complexities of electronics, metal-and-wood, and of course basketball and tennis. Without money, he was a half-day student, meaning he took classes for half the day and worked in the rest of the day for his room and board. Thus it would have taken him five years to complete high school, so ever restless and inquisitive, he decided at the age of twenty, to join the Navy for four years. The Navy sent him to electronic school before assigning him to a destroyer tender. On this ship, he saw a great deal of the world. At age 24, he re-entered the Foundation School for a semester to finish high school, and then enrolled at Berea College. There he majored in Industrial Arts and played tennis so well that he was a finalist in several tournaments. In college, he met Joyce Barnes from Tennessee, and they were married. After graduation Truman taught in Louisville and then moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he and Joyce taught for 30 years. There, Truman also worked successfully part-time as a real estate broker and he coached tennis at Baldwin Wallace College. Joyce and Truman reared two daughters in Cleveland, and their grandchildren, who know little of life in the Appalachian Mountains, became the main inspiration for this book. When Joyce and Truman retired from teaching, their love of Berea College and the Berea community drew them back to Kentucky. Here they have managed several rental properties and developed home-building sights. Truman was elected for several terms to Berea City Council, taught students, faculty, and community people to make furniture in the Colleges woodworking shop, and coached the college tennis team. He also continued to follow the tennis circuits, winning many gold metals in his age class. Joyce has also been much involved in the arts and crafts scene for which Berea is famous. She and Truman are active members of Union Church, the mother church of Berea College. They are also generous supporters of Berea College in the knowledge that the lives of other young people from the mountains will be enriched there, as theirs have been. In this book, Joyce and Trumans grandchildren, and others, will learn much about the life Truman lived as a boy, about the one-room school he attended, his classmates, the games they played, the spelling bees, the sporting contests, the victories and disappointments in his budding life, his teachers and pastors vigorous efforts to teach right from wrong, and his own family history. Along the way, from Big Creek to Berea, to Louisville, and Cleveland and back to Berea, we learn Trumans story and the events that shaped him from the lad on the cover in Happy Jack overalls looking with sharp and expectant eyes, to the disciplined tireless, teacher, public servant, athlete, auctioneer, craftsman, and student of all Kentucky things today. Hes been a little modest, however, like most mountain people, in telling his story. So keep in mind all that he has done, all his interests and involvements, as he remembers and tells you about his life in the heart of Appalachia. Loyal Jones Berea, Kentucky

Appalachia has long been stereotyped as a region of feuds, moonshine stills, mine wars, environmental destruction, joblessness, and hopelessness. Robert Schenkkan's 1992 Pulitzer-Prize winning play The Kentucky Cycle once again adopted these stereotypes, recasting the American myth as a story of repeated failure and poverty--the failure of the American spirit and the poverty of the American soul. Dismayed by national critics' lack of attention to the negative depictions of mountain people in the play, a group of Appalachian scholars rallied against the stereotypical representations of the region's people. In Back Talk from Appalachia, these writers talk back to the American mainstream, confronting head-on those who view their home region one-dimensionally. The essays, written by historians, literary scholars, sociologists, creative writers, and activists, provide a variety of responses. Some examine the sources of Appalachian mythology in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature. Others reveal personal experiences and examples of grassroots activism that confound and contradict accepted images of ""hillbillies."" The volume ends with a series of critiques aimed directly at The Kentucky Cycle and similar contemporary works that highlight the sociological, political, and cultural assumptions about Appalachia fueling today's false stereotypes.

Imagine a place in the 21st Century that has remained only moderately fazed by the passing of time. In the heart of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, such a place actually exists! A Sense of Place: My Life and Times on Roaring Creek explores the author’s connectedness to a fairly remote Southern Appalachian Highlands community called Roaring Creek. The people and customs of the Roaring Creek Valley have always, and are still considered by many as being unique, even among fellow Avery Countians. Vacillating between the sublime, the ordinary, and the downright ridiculous, this work both embraces and celebrates that uniqueness. A Sense of Place: My Life and Times on Roaring Creek is a coming-of-age memoir. The book touches on such varied themes as history, family dynamics, geography, dialect, food, customs, demographics, and religion. Woven throughout the book is an obvious thread of contemplative, Christian spirituality. Parts of the book will move the reader to tears, some parts out-loud laughter, but hopefully all parts will spur personal reflection. The book both begins and ends on a passionate note of personal reflections. Even those sections of the book that are written in heavier tones, always conclude on positive, inspirational, major keys. A Sense of Place consists of seventeen chapters, with a total page count of 172. Six representative chapter titles are: No Home Like Place; Thicker Than Water; And That's the Way We Were; That Roaring Creek Brogue; Gravy is My Favorite Beverage; The Face of the Deep. In his stories, reflective essays, and brief historical summaries, the author illustrates how cultural context exerts such a powerful, impelling influence on all. He offers head-on critiques of his perspectives and life experiences that gave shape to his own story. It is the author’s intention for his audience to understand the uniqueness of life in the Southern Appalachian Highlands, and how that uniqueness came about in the first place. Sharing some important stretches of his journey, the author anticipates that the readers may gain a better understanding of their own journey.

The Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English is a revised and expanded edition of the Weatherford Award–winning Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, published in 2005 and known in Appalachian studies circles as the most comprehensive reference work dedicated to Appalachian vernacular and linguistic practice. Editors Michael B. Montgomery and Jennifer K. N. Heinmiller document the variety of English used in parts of eight states, ranging from West Virginia to Georgia—an expansion of the first edition's geography, which was limited primarily to North Carolina and Tennessee—and include over 10,000 entries drawn from over 2,200 sources. The entries include approximately 35,000 citations to provide the reader with historical context, meaning, and usage. Around 1,600 of those examples are from letters written by Civil War soldiers and their family members, and another 4,000 are taken from regional oral history recordings. Decades in the making, the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English surpasses the original by thousands of entries. There is no work of this magnitude available that so completely illustrates the rich language of the Smoky Mountains and Southern Appalachia.