Lucinda Harmon struggles to break away from the sheltering bonds of family and the mountain traditions to which McDowell County still clung during the 1950s. Her goal was a bigger and broader world through the realm of education. In striving for her goal, she encounters resistance from family, religious strictures, and traditional roles for women. She also struggles with the love of two men, one who challenges her to risk the unknown, and another who overwhelms her with possessive love.
Lucinda's Mountain is the first book in a three book series that describes the little known culture of the mountain tops surrounding the coal towns in Appalachia. Much has been written about the coal industry and culture as well as the coal camps or towns. Nothing is written, however, about the sturdy Scotch/Irish settlers who claimed the high mountain tops as home. Yet these people kept the mining communities alive and fed from the produce, timber, diary products, and meats that was used to keep their families alive also. Much can be learned by studying the interdependence of each community who like the miners and the operators needed each other; in fact had to have each other to survive and make a profit. Looking back it seems that nobody took the time to look at the broader picture. This set of three books delve into this dilemma, but not to the extent that a true historian or economist could do.
The second book, Jason's Journey deals with the doctor brought into the coal town by the mining company. This doctor treated not only the miners but everyone in the area. He meets and falls in love with Lucinda Harmon and she falls in love with him but the gulf is too wide between his culture and hers to bridge easily. He encourages Lucinda to attend college hoping that this will help.
The third book, The Beckoning Hills, finds Lucinda in an abusive marriage and Jason married to a woman who could never win his heart. Both Lucinda and Jason have children in their marriages and both turn to the Lord in their efforts to live with their unrequited love.
Excerpt
Lucinda's mother, Nancy Harmon was drawing water from the well, as she thought about the trips Doc Harrison had made all over the tops of these mountains. She hoped this young feller would be as good. "He'll probably be scared of these roads, specially in the winter time," though Nancy as the water came to the top of the well in its long slender container. This doctor was probably used to wide paved roads; not like here where roads staggered drunkenly up, down, and around the steep hillsides like bridle paths through a forest. Burb often said that people never thought that one day there would be cars and trucks, and the roads were just fine for wagons, carts, and sleds pulled by horses.
Professional Reviews
Howard Dorgan
"In her excellent novel, Lucinda's Mountain, Adda Leah Davis beautifully captures the intricately confining lifestyles of a young appalachian woman growing to maturity among complicated social and religious family values....Readers will be inspired by Lucinda harmon as she struggles to work through relationships.... I was overjoyed when I found that the author plans to extend Lucinda's story into a trilogy. I don't want to leave this woman's story so quickly.
Dr. Robert J. Higgs
Lucinda's Mountain is a compelling story set in West Virginia around the 1950s in such locales as Bradshaw, Iaeger, Jolo, War, and Welch. Highly individualist in style, tone, and treatment of characters and place it is firmly rooted in a great American tradition of realism.... REalism succeeds by depiction of the familiar, the ordinary, the commonplace, how life is(or was) lived on a daily basis in a particular place and time .... This is precisely the case in Lucinda's Mountain.
Dr. Thomas Keats McKnight
Adda Leah Davis has written a book with characters that are realistic and compelling without being overly romantic or idealized - not an easy task ... Her historical research gives the setting accuracy and a lifelike artistic representation.The dialect and teh authentic Appalachian expressions create a language of practicality and pragmatism that is hard to miss. I can't wait for the next installment.
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