Cabins in the Laurel

Muriel Earley Sheppard

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780807843284, 9780807801840
• eBook ISBN: 9781469620770
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In 1928 New York native Muriel Earley Sheppard moved with her mining engineer husband to the Toe River Valley—an isolated pocket in North Carolina between the Blue Ridge and Iron Mountains. Sheppard began visiting her neighbors and forming friendships in remote coves and rocky clearings, and in 1935 her account of life in the mountains—Cabins in the Laurel—was published. The book included 128 striking photographs by the well–known Chapel Hill photographer, Bayard Wootten, a frequent visitor to the area.

The early reviews of Cabins in the Laurel were overwhelmingly positive, but the mountain people—Sheppard’s friends and subjects—initially felt that she had portrayed them as too old–fashioned, even backward. As novelist John Ehle shows in his foreword, though, fifty years have made a huge difference, and the people of the Toe River Valley have been among its most affectionate readers.

This new large–format edition, which makes use of many of Wootten’s original negatives, will introduce Sheppard’s words and Wootten’s photography to a whole new generation of readers—in the Valley and beyond.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• CABINS IN THE LAUREL
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• CHAPTER I: Apalatcy
• CHAPTER II: Pole Cabins on the Toe
• CHAPTER III: Yancey County
• CHAPTER IV: Guerillas
• CHAPTER V: Chaos and Isolation
• CHAPTER VI: Cloudland
• CHAPTER VII: Ground-Hog Holes
• CHAPTER VIII: Buried Treasure
• CHAPTER IX: Spruce Pine
• CHAPTER X: “’Light and Hitch”
• CHAPTER XI: “I Got a Girl on Sourwood Mountain”
• CHAPTER XII: New Cabins in the Laurel
• CHAPTER XIII: Blockade
• CHAPTER XIV: Saints of Holiness
• CHAPTER XV: Comedy and Tragedy at Bakersville
• CHAPTER XVI: Fireside Industries
• CHAPTER XVII: The Mayland Fair
• CHAPTER XVIII: “Black Jack Davie”
• CHAPTER XIX: The Burnt Mountain Wedding
• CHAPTER XX: Kinfolks in the Hills