Western North Carolina Civil War buffs: A book for you!

[Sequoia]

http://ec3.images-amazon.com/images/P/0805078665.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

I picked this book up in the library after reading the flyleaf but didn't know these events took place near the town of Asheville where I grew up. Well written and great characters. I was so curious I did a search and came up with this:

N.C. novelist is drawn back to the site of a slaughter that still echoes in his family

SHELTON LAUREL - Ghost voices whisper in the old killing field. Novelist Ron Rash has heard them in a far corner of Western North Carolina's Madison County.

Nestled near the Tennessee border, the Shelton Laurel valley is the spot where Confederate troops turned on suspected Unionist sympathizers in January 1863, killing 13 people, including a 12-year-old boy. Most of the executioners and victims were neighbors. The Shelton Laurel Massacre has haunted Rash for decades because his relatives were involved on both the Confederate and Union sides.

Rash, 52, an English professor at Western Carolina University, has put Shelton Laurel on the literary map. He went back last month for the first time since 2003. His new novel, "The World Made Straight" (Henry Holt and Co., $24) links the massacre with the present.

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http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/entertainment/performing_arts/14846094.htm

[Joe_VB]

1. Looks like a good book......

[Sequoia]

2. It is....just finished it at lunch time.

At the end all I could think of was, damn, just damn. So don't read ahead. I liked his writing so much I went and checked out his "Saints at the River".