Wayne Caldwell – författare

“A brilliant portrait of a community and a way of life long gone, a lost America.”–Charles FrazierAgainst the breathtaking backdrop of Appalachia comes a rich, multilayered post—Civil War saga of three generations of families–their dreams, their downfalls, and their faith. Cataloochee is a slice of southern Americana told in the classic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner.Nestled in the mountains of North Carolina sits Cataloochee. In a time when “where you was born was where God wanted you,” the Wrights and the Carters, both farming families, travel to the valley to escape the rapid growth of neighboring towns and to have a few hundred acres all to themselves. But progress eventually winds its way to Cataloochee, too, and year after year the population swells as more people come to the valley to stake their fortune. Never one to pass on opportunity, Ezra Banks, an ambitious young man seeking some land of his own, arrives in Cataloochee in the 1880s. His first order of business is to marry a Carter girl, Hannah, the daughter of the valley’s largest landowner. From there Ezra’s brood grows, as do those of the Carters and the Wrights. With hard work and determination, the burgeouning community transforms wilderness into home, to be passed on through generations.But the idyll is not to last, nor to be inherited: The government takes steps to relocate folks to make room for the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and tragedy will touch one of the clans in a single, unimaginable act.Wayne Caldwell brings to life the community’s historic struggles and close kinships over a span of six decades. Full of humor, darkness, beauty, and wisdom, Cataloochee is a classic novel of place and family.From the Hardcover edition.

Woodsmoke is a poetry collection that renders the experience of living out life in a single, exquisite place—“in the shadow of the mountain my father said was mother to us all”—Mount Pisgah in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Wayne Caldwell, author of the novel Cataloochee, brings us the waning days of Posey Green, who cuts his own firewood, looks after himself, and tends to the land where his wife Birdie and her people are buried. Posey’s colloquial narrative poetry is presented as found verse, conjured from Posey’s internal musings—and these poems alternate with those of a new neighbor, a sympathetic female poet who observes Posey and his surroundings and creates a more formal poetic record of his days.

Woodsmoke is a poetry collection that renders the experience of living out life in a single, exquisite place—“in the shadow of the mountain my father said was mother to us all”—Mount Pisgah in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Wayne Caldwell, author of the novel Cataloochee, brings us the waning days of Posey Green, who cuts his own firewood, looks after himself, and tends to the land where his wife Birdie and her people are buried. Posey’s colloquial narrative poetry is presented as found verse, conjured from Posey’s internal musings—and these poems alternate with those of a new neighbor, a sympathetic female poet who observes Posey and his surroundings and creates a more formal poetic record of his days.

River Road is a collection of narrative poems in the voice of Susan McFalls, writing from her new home in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.Wayne Caldwell, author of Cataloochee, returns to North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains to continue the story of Susan McFalls, who is left on Mount Pisgah after the death of her dear friend and neighbor Posey Green. These poems follow Susan as she moves to and renovates an old house on River Road, vividly bringing to life the wild and beautiful land and culture of the Blue Ridge and the cherished memories and new friends that continue to anchor her to this special place.River Road is a companion to Caldwell’s first poetry collection, Woodsmoke, and while the two can stand alone, together they paint a fuller picture of friendship, loss, and the ways in which lives are shaped by the North Carolina mountains.