Mountain Folk: More Oral Histories of the Appalachian People, Paperback

Mountain Folk is the fifth and final book in the Backroads series by Lynn Coffey that showcases the lives and customs of the native Appalachian people of Virginia's highlands. Interviews with seventeen people still living in and around the hamlet of Love where the author makes her home, shed a new light on these private and oft-misunderstood folks whose roots grow deep in the rocky soil of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Read about Ruby May Henderson and Irma Roberts, both now over one-hundred years of age who can remember what life was like during the horse and buggy days of their childhood. Or Carl Coffey, whose father died when he was eight years old, leaving him and his younger in charge of making a living for their family of five by logging the forest with a massive but gentle ox named "Mike." Be swept away by Frances Fitzgerald's account of the Flood of 1969, when Hurricane Camille ripped through rural Nelson County, Virginia, dumping over two feet of rain in an eight hour period, destroying not only property but taking the mountains down with it, along with 124 lives. Read the eulogy for Owen Garfield Campbell; one of the last true mountain men of our area, who, following in the footsteps of his early ancestors, continued to live a life devoid of all modern conveniences. These stories and more will thrill the reader and command new respect for the last generation of mountain people who lived the old way.

About the Author:

As a young girl growing up along the gold coast of south Florida, Lynn always had a Waldenish bent towards the old ways and longed to live a simplistic lifestyle in the mountains, far from the flatlands of her home state. In 1980 her dream came true when she moved to the tiny hamlet of Love, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Realizing the elderly neighbors living around her and their unique culture was slowly ebbing away, Lynn thought there must be a way to capture the existing Appalachian lifestyle before it disappeared altogether. With no prior experience in journalism she began publishing a monthly newspaper called Backroads that chronicled the customs and activities of the native mountain people she had grown to love; the people who mentored her and taught her their ways. Backroads carved out a folksy niche, having a twenty-five year run before Lynn retired in 2006. But the mountain people's plea, "Don't let our stories die with your retirement," compelled Lynn to start writing five books about the vanishing and oft-misunderstood people of her area. Lynn's fifth book, entitled Mountain Folk, records the oral histories of seventeen native people living in the vicinity of Love where the author makes her home. All five books may be viewed on Lynn's website at www.backroadsbooks.com. Lynn is happily married to Billy Coffey, a rugged native of Love, Virginia, who is also a Baptist minister and they continue to live a simple life on their mountain top farm. They have five children, six grandchildren and welcomed their first great-grandchild in December of 2015.