In my last post, I wrote about my friend Charles Price, whose first novel, Hiwassee, is set in Appalachia during the Civil War. I went on to say that there haven't been very many books that examine the war in the Mountain South, and certainly not too many novels. Well, I have another one I want to tell you about, if you'll give me a few minutes of your time. And if the crows haven't just taken your eyes, you've already seen the title. The novel is by Vicki Lane, who's originally from Tampa, Florida, but she's lived in western North Carolina for 45 years now and knows the place in the way that all writers must know a place in order to write about it. In other words, she knows its culture, its folkways, its history, and knows how that history is still present in the landscape and within the blood and memory of the people who live there. It's cliché to say that the Civil War pitted neighbors and family against each other, but it [...]