Category Archives: 1990-1999

1990-1999

by | March 13, 2008 · 9:58 am

Lee Smith. Saving Grace. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995.

Florida Grace Shepherd had a rough childhood. Raised by a father who was a snake-handling preacher and abused by her half-brother, she managed to escape by marrying at seventeen. Set in the fictional mountain town Scrabble Creek, N.C., the novel is enlivened by the many kind and colorful characters in Grace’s life. The story follows her through to adulthood and traces her struggles in her relationships with her husband and children, and difficulty in coming to terms with her own religious faith.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1995, Mountains, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Smith, Lee

by | · 9:58 am

Bland Simpson. The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

As far as anyone knew, the last person to see Nell Cropsey alive was her boyfriend Jim Wilcox, who left her crying on her front porch in November 1901 after he ended their relationship. The people of Elizabeth City, N.C. looked desperately for the young woman, relying on bloodhounds and even psychics in a search that brought national attention to the small town. Nell’s body was finally found floating in the Pasquotank River, a few weeks after she disappeared. Jim Wilcox was accused of the murder, even thought the evidence against him was only circumstantial and he hotly proclaimed his innocence. In this “nonfiction novel,” Simpson dramatizes the true story of Nell Cropsey with the touch of a novelist, relying on first- person narrators and period details to give an intimate look at small-town eastern North Carolina at the dawn of the twentieth century.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1993, Coastal Plain, Docufiction, Historical, Pasquotank, Simpson, Bland

by | · 9:58 am

Charles Price. Freedom’s Altar. Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, 1999.

Set in the violent, lawless days just after the Civil War, this novel explores the deeply complicated questions about how the South would recover and adjust to new ideas about race and class. Daniel McFee, a former slave who had fought for the Union, has returned home to western North Carolina to become a sharecropper on land owned by his old master, Madison Curtis. Despite good intentions, both Curtis and McFee have trouble adjusting to this new relationship. It’s especially hard to make any meaningful progress when the whole region is overrun with violent vigilantes all too willing to take matters into their own hands. The novel is based in part on the author’s family history. Freedom’s Altar won the 1999 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for the best novel by a North Carolinian.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1999, Historical, Mountains, Price, Charles

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by | · 9:58 am

Michael Parker. Hello Down There. New York: Scribners, 1993.

Edwin Keene has become something of a recluse after a tragic car accident in which one of the passengers was killed. The aristocratic Keene, son of a prominent local family, eases the pain of his own injuries with too-frequent doses of morphine. As his life appears to be slipping away, there is a sudden hope for redemption when Keene falls for Eureka Spaight, a local high-school girl whose working-class family is very different from his own. The novel is set in the early 1950s in the fictional eastern North Carolina town of Trent.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1993, Coastal Plain, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Parker, Michael

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by | · 9:58 am

Laurence Naumoff. Silk Hope, N.C. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994.

The old farmhouse outside of the small Piedmont community of Silk Hope has passed down through generations from mother to daughter. The original occupants stipulated that only women could inherit the house. The current owners, Frannie and Natalie Vaughan, have just inherited the house and are faced with a tough decision. The sisters couldn’t be more different — Frannie is a rebel, the wild one in the family, while practical Natalie comes up with the idea to sell the house and land. As they struggle to decide what to do with the house, the sisters have to consider their own roles in the family’s history, and determine whether or not, in the modern South, women still need a sanctuary all their own.

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

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1994, Chatham, Naumoff, Laurence, Piedmont

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Jill McCorkle. Carolina Moon. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1996.

Set in fictional Fulton, N.C. (a town “halfway between the river and the ocean”), this novel is populated by eccentric characters including a controversial local disk jockey and the memorable Quee Purdy, proprietress of a center to help people stop smoking. The novel is told from several perspectives and contains overlapping plots of romance and murder.

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1996, McCorkle, Jill, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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Gail Godwin. Evensong. New York: Ballantine, 1999.

Evensong, a sequel to the 1991 novel Father Melancholy’s Daughter, continues the story of Margaret Gower, an Episcopal rector in High Balsam, N.C., a fictional community in the Blue Ridge Mountains, not far from Mountain City, based on Asheville, where Godwin grew up. Set over a four-week period in 1999, Evensong chronicles a difficult time in Gower’s life as she questions both her marriage and her faith.

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1999, Buncombe, Godwin, Gail, Mountains, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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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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Philip Gerard. Cape Fear Rising. Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, 1994.

When Sam Jenks and his wife Gray Ellen move from Chicago to Wilmington, N.C. in August 1898, they find a city in turmoil. Amidst a vicious, racist political campaign, a group of white citizens begin to mobilize against the city’s large African American population. Based on the actual events of the November 1898 Wilmington riot that led to the murder of many African Americans and the violent overthrow of the city’s government, Gerard dramatizes one of the most significant periods in North Carolina history.

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1994, Coast, Docufiction, Gerard, Philip, Historical, New Hanover

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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.

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

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