Books

Matewan Garden Club
we are never alone

Eighteen-year-old Henry Blankenship dreams of building a house for his childhood sweetheart, Annie Dill, and his mother, Gertie, known by their hill folk as the “woman with a shovel.” Annie dreams of six children and a room of her own to pen the unsung legacies of Appalachian women—yet, Annie’s mother, Margaret Dill, President of Matewan Garden Club, has other grand plans for her only child. Unwittingly, Russian refugees Natalia Semenov and her son Olaf, Henry’s employers at Hunt’s Feed & Seed, come to Henry and Annie’s rescue.

Matewan Garden Club spans three generations and a multitude of dreams amongst the tight-knit West Virginia immigrant coal camps and towns along Tug Fork: Matewan, Williamson, Blackberry City, Red Jacket, Thacker Holler, and countless hollers in between. Like Tug River’s many tributaries, these communities converge in Matewan to build enduring love amid the business of native flora and fauna—seedlings that bloom in the hard times of the Bolshevik Revolution, impoverished post–WWI Europe, Depression-era America, and beyond.

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The Mantle

​From sunrise to sunset, season to season, we do not know what hardship will fall upon our path. It is by faith and grace we do not stumble. And when we do, it is by faith and grace we rise again.

So begins the Mahari love story, at once a keen and fertile legend of a noble people who live by the Maker’s truth, mercy, loving-kindness, forgiveness, and resilience.  Survivor of Hu Mani, the Great Ruin of invasion and pestilence, ancient and wise King Hamrabi scribed the Word Tree to preserve the Mahari Way, in faith as a confident foretaste to coming generations: Learn the Words. Love the Words. Live the Words.

Now eight generations later the tribe’s lifeblood – and very existence – hangs in the balance. Without an heir to the throne there is doom for the Mahari Way, and an evil branch of the royal line seeks to destroy the kingdom. But at the right time, a prince is born, and Rahabem’s journey as heir to the Mantle, and the Mahari throne, is a path filled with the brace of loving community, adventure, friendship, and self-discovery. As he grows to fulfill his parcae, by grace he leads his people to an astonishing discovery and reunion with kinsmen from the Other Side, in redemption and fulfillment of the Maker’s Way.

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Growing Lavender and Other Poems

More than a book of poems on gardening and the art of living, Growing Lavender and Other Poems is a collection to be savored: a modern woman's Walden that chronicles Iris's journey through everyday joys and loss. There is delight in the heady scent of lavender, seeing a smiling "black dog racing" and recognizing "you've seen something amazing in this crazy world." There is also sorrow of a lost blue-eyed child and a mother with Alzheimer's who concludes, "There's too much to remember." Iris's quieted mind speaks courage and beauty to everyone who has ever lost a loved one, or cherished a garden.

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