When I pick up a new book, I first look at the blurb regarding its content and the photograph and bio of the author on the dust jacket.
Next, I open the book and turn to the Acknowledgments section at the end. Those problems are still with us. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through it all, he reckons with his own inability in a popular culture where even superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
More often than not, authors write about the locations with which they are intimately familiar. Lee , a cartographical anomaly, since its boundaries form a square mile triangle at the southwestern tip of Virginia where the Cumberland Gap ties a tri-state knot between its borders and those of Kentucky and Tennessee.
I received moreover a jolt of surprise after I read the first pages of the book. My ah-ha moment came with the realization that I was already quite familiar with the landscape of Lee County, which I call Ancestor Land, since it is one of the locations on my itinerary of Family Footsteps trips taken as part of a genealogical research project I have undertaken. Because I have grown to love this southeastern part of our country as much as I do the American West, I will here temporarily forsake my role as book reviewer and act as a travel itinerary planner.
At the same time, all one may wish for in order to enjoy traveling to a place of choice is a paperback travel guide. All you need from me here are these few words: For those of you who like to go fishing, photograph scenic panoramas of the setting sun draping mountain ranges with a pink chiffon scarf, wish to camp beside clear streams, like to take nature walks or hike in tree-forested mountains a trip to Lee County and adjacent parts of southwestern Virginia would be a good choice.
