An evocative memoir of a childhood spent at the foot of Catocin Mountain in the Appalachian range. J.D. Ballam's story of growing up in a place where life had not changed for hundreds of years is both a celebration and a lament.

The Road to Harmony: An Appalachian Childhood

J.D. Ballam

Pan/Macmillan

<p>From the broken mountain, with its green rocks and running springs, to Hawbottom, with Catoctin on the right and South Mountain across the valley to the left, the Hollow Road turns past the silent stones of the old distillery, dropping away to the stream and past Mosker’s farm to The Corner, then up the little hill between the houses, around Orpha’s barn, to the first farm on the right. This is the road home – the road to Harmony – where a hog can root the mortgage off a farm faster than Hell can send a feather and four saddlebags of gold lie buried at Bootjack Spring ... Somewhere in these things there is the history of a people – small and poor, democratic and proud. It is a history that is part fiction, and part the determination of a community to believe in itself. It is the story of this community, in a recollection larger than my own, that this book seeks to tell.</p>

Biographies & Memoirs

Long Barn Books

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Books by J.D. Ballam

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by J.D. Ballam. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Road to Harmony: An Appalachian Childhood

The Road to Harmony: An Appalachian Childhood