Appalachia

http://www.coastweekend.com/coastal_life/enter-appalachia-at-northwest-author-series/article_7df4fbb2-d0bf-11e3-8c22-001a4bcf887a.html
Enter Appalachia at Northwest Author Series
Author Karen Spears Zacharias to share about first novel
May 6, 2014

CANNON BEACH — Karen Spears Zacharias, the May speaker at the Cannon Beach Library’s Northwest Author Series, has been a newspaper reporter and columnist, the author of six books, a Gold Star daughter, and she joined a cross-country motorcycle trip with a group of Vietnam veterans in Run for the Wall. At 2 p.m. Saturday, May 10, she will talk about her latest book, “Mother of Rain,” at the library, 131 N. Hemlock St. The public is welcome, and the event is free.

“Mother of Rain” is Zacharias’ first novel after many credits in non-fiction, journalism and memoir. Set in a close-knit east Tennessee community as the Great Depression yields to World War II, the book paints the story of the hard-scrabble life in the Appalachian area. In the idiom of that time and place, the author portrays a sympathetic group: Maizee Hurd, her husband Zebulon, local Melungeon healer Burdy Lutrell and many others. Zacharias spent years living with an aunt and grandmother in this area and is a descendant of some of the early settlers of Hawkins County, Tennessee.

The book has won the Appalachian Studies Association’s Weatherford Award for Fiction, an award that has been given in the past to Barbara Kingsolver, Charles Frazier, Darnell Arnoult and others.

Zacharias’ first book was a memoir of Judge Rufe McComb, followed by “After the Flag Has Been Folded: A Daughter Remembers the Father She Lost to War – and the Mother Who Held Her Family,” published in 2006. Her other books include “Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?” in 2010, and “A Silence of Mockingbirds: the Memoir of a Murder.” The latter is an investigative account of the 2005 murder of a 3-year old girl in a small Oregon college town thought to be a good place to raise kids. Writing this book with the permission of the child’s father, Zacharias said that as a former educator she felt the weight of responsibility to see signs of abuse and hoped the book would be informative and redemptive.... MORE