Bearwallow: A Personal History of a Mountain Homeland (2014). Bearwallow was named the 2014 Appalachian Book of the Year in nonfiction and was awarded gold in the 2015 Independent Publisher Book (IPPY) Awards in memoir. His essays have been published in Oxford American, Garden and Gun, The Bitter Southerner, and Brevity, among others. He also writes frequently for Our State Magazine. Jones earned his MFA from the University of Iowa and is a professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University, in his native North Carolina. He also serves as the series co-editor for In Place: a literary nonfiction book series from WVU Press.
At Lit Hub the author tagged seven "beautifully complicated books about complicated family histories," including:
Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation, Maud NewtonRead about another entry on the list.
Newton’s heavily researched journey into her family’s past doesn’t shy away from dark secrets. Like the above books, the stakesare personal. Her obsession (her words) into genealogy starts close, with her estranged father, and she unspools the family past from there, in part to understand what led to the dysfunction of her childhood. She finds plenty in her research to account for the anxieties of today, and in a book that is organized like a patchwork quilt (as the cover prompts us to notice), she continually steps back from her own family to explore larger questions of inheritance and epigenetics and regional identities. The book is a marvel in its intensity, thoroughness, and honesty.
Ancestor Trouble is among Juliet Patterson's eight books that tackle the subject of ancestral legacy.
--Marshal Zeringue
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