I fell in love with the Blue Ridge Mountains when I was in my early twenties and moved to Virginia from New York. One evening, when at the Alexandria Public Library in Northern Virginia, I came across a display on Shenandoah National Park with photos of the mountain families and books like Hollow Folk, the Undying Past of Shenandoah National Park, Recollections; The People of the Blue Ridge Remember. At that time, the mid-1980s, these were the only books published, and Hollow Folk was highly biased. Yet, it lit a fire in me to discover more about the people and families of the Shenandoah National Park.

When I moved to the Shenandoah Valley and left my intelligence analyst career and began teaching, I dived into the research and spent many hours locating the old homesites on the SNP. After presenting at many academic conferences on the subject, one winter’s morning, Mary’s voice spoke through me and I started writing Across the Blue Ridge Mountains.
I am a Professor of American and Appalachian Literature at Blue Ridge Community College. My poetry has been published in Lumina magazine, Sagewoman, and the North Shore Woman’s Newspaper. My creative writing and this novel have been edited and mentored by authors, Sue Eisenfeld, Tom Barabash, and Pam Houston, and I am grateful for their support.