Description
Book SynopsisPreviously examined only by a handful of scholars, the journals of Emma Bell Miles (1879–1919) contain poignant and incisive accounts of nature and a woman’s perspective on love and marriage, death customs, child raising, medical care, and subsistence on the land in southern Appalachia in the early twentieth century.
Trade Review“A crucial, rare, and enlightening resource. This work has the potential to deepen our understanding of the challenges and rewards of Appalachian women writing.”
“These writings, expertly collected by Cox, delve into Mile's life and observations on her family's challenging economic circumstances, her son's death from scarlet fever, and her own fight against tuberculosis, all transcribed in her trademark evocative prose.” * Appalachian Heritage *
“The triumphs and trials of writer-artist Emma Bell Miles will resonate with modern readers. Steven Cox’s balanced introduction and careful editing of Miles’s journals (1908–1918) provide context for a take on Appalachian life that was at once sympathetic and unromantic, prescient yet still elusive. Sadly the short life the Journal records also reveals the price of a deep ambivalence for tradition and modernity in an era eerily similar to our own.”
“Reading Miles’s journals thirty-six years ago in the Oklahoma home of daughter Judith Miles Ford, I felt then the world must see her poignant observations of the natural and cultural environment of her Appalachia. Steven Cox’s choices from Miles’s personal writings reveal powerful insights of a woman who lived, loved, absorbed, and recorded her place more than 100 years past.”
Table of Contents* List of Illustrations * Foreword by Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt * Preface * Acknowledgments * Introduction * Chapter 1: Walden's Ridge * Chapter 2: Return to Walden's Ridge * Chapter 3: Tragedy and Heartbreak * Chapter 4: "I Must Be Free!" * Chapter 5: Pine Breeze Sanitarium * Chapter 6: A Brief Separation * Chapter 7: The Good Gray Mother * Epilogue * Notes * Index
