Title: Daughters of Green Mountain Gap
Author: Teri M Brown
Genre: Historical Fiction
Book Blurb:
Appalachian granny woman. A daughter on a crusade. A granddaughter caught between the two.
Maggie McCoury, a generational healer woman, relies on family traditions, folklore, and beliefs gleaned from a local Cherokee tribe. Her daughter, Carrie Ann, believes her university training holds the answers. As they clash over the use of roots, herbs, and a dash of mountain magic versus the medicine available in the town’s apothecary, Josie Mae doesn’t know whom to follow. But what happens when neither family traditions nor science can save the ones you love most?
Daughters of Green Mountain Gap weaves a compelling tale of Maggie, Carrie Ann, and Josie Mae, three generations of remarkable North Carolina women living at the turn of the twentieth century, shedding light on racism, fear of change, loss of traditions, and the intricate dynamics within a family. Author Teri M. Brown skillfully navigates the complexities of their lives, revealing that some questions are not as easy to answer as one might think.
Excerpt:
During the daylight hours, she kept herself busy cooking, cleaning, feeding the animals, and chopping firewood. She had even taken to going far up the side of the mountain to hunt for large hardwood limbs to drag back to the homestead. Anything to make her tired enough to sleep.
But when the night came, she would lie awake, visions passing before her eyes like ghosts. Esther holding baby Malcolm. Her beloved Henry with his shirt tied around his waist as he drove in the nails that built their first home. The beautiful, silent face of her stillborn son.
Then would come her daughter, jabbing her finger, flecks of spittle flying from her mouth as she would scream, “You, mother, you killed him.”
Sleeping, when she finally succumbed, only led to dreams. Esther begging, “No, please, Maggie. Don’t do this. I don’t want to die.” And then she’d wake in a sweat.
Maggie pulled the door shut to the storeroom with her medicines, knowing she would never practice healing again. Instead, she carved two more notches on her walking stick. She rubbed her thumb across all seventeen indentations, remembering, in vivid detail, her role in each death.
The number was not insignificant. Though her Italian heritage was slim, she remembered the warning. “Seventeen is the number of death. Don’t write it down, Maggie. Don’t even think it. If’n you do, you’re saying your life is over!”
Maggie never really believed it – until now. Now, seventeen people declared in her dreams, “I’m dead. My life is over.” Seventeen deaths, she realized, were a direct result of her inadequacies and incompetence. No, she would never again be the granny woman. In fact, she should have never done so to begin with. Her daughter, Carrie Ann, had been right all along.
As if to make her isolation complete, a blizzard, the likes of which Maggie had never experienced, rolled in. She screwed her face into a mocking smile. “Very fitting, Mother Nature.”
The sheer immenseness of the snow kept her homebound, leaving Maggie with plenty of time to wrestle with her thoughts. In addition to the specters of those who died because of her, she fought her conscience. How could she make amends when she couldn’t bring the dead back to life? How could she ever move forward knowing her hands, the hands tasked to heal, did just the opposite? Then she remembered the utlinowa.
Many years ago, a Cherokee medicine man, Oukonunaka, warned her to be wary of a man exiled from the tribe.
“Waya killed his wife, Awinita, in a fit of anger. Our council considered the best punishment, realizing he was like the utlinowa, the soft-shelled turtle who is too aggressive to live among others of his kind.
“The tribe banished Waya, taking from him his name, his status, his village, his language – everything that made him Cherokee. You may spot him, Maggie, from time to time. He lives alone, no longer speaking. He creeps along the edges of humanity, wishing he had been less like the utlinowa. Beware of him. Do not give him food or shelter.”
It was with this memory, she knew what she had to do. Waya’s crime was murder – as was hers. But her victims had no voice and no way to demand retribution. So, she would take it upon herself to carry out justice.
“I am no better than Waya. In fact, I am worse. He killed in anger. I, on the other hand, did the opposite of what I was sent to this earth to do. Not in anger, but in carelessness. In foolishness. In incompetence.”
Now, when the ghosts of Esther came to her, she begged forgiveness, telling her she would never hurt another.
“I have become an utlinowa. From this day forward, I will live alone. My hands will never touch another. My thoughts will never turn into words for another to hear. My actions will never again cause pain or suffering or death. I cannot bring you back, my dear friend, but I assure you I will never harm another.”
By the time the snow began to melt, Maggie knew what she had to do. She packed some of her belongings, just those that would help her eke out the barest existence, and loaded them into the wagon. Then she headed for the tiny cabin built by Henry all those years ago.
The small one-room building stood empty except for the animals who found refuge from the weather. Maggie pushed open the door, hauling in the blankets, one large stockpot, a cast iron pan, and an assortment of other necessities. Then, she made her way to the barn, which was more akin to a lean-to. The years of neglect caused the south wall to collapse.
“It will do,” she thought as she led the mule into the space.
Though not banished in the same way as Waya, having to live among the trees on the edge of civilization, Maggie determined to live out her days in the small cabin. She did not want room and ease and a large garden. She did not want a front porch for sipping lemonade or a kitchen table large enough for guests. She didn’t want to be reminded of her family or the storeroom of herbs. She simply wanted to be left alone to atone for her sins.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
Author Website: https://www.terimbrown.com/daughters_of_green_mountain_gap.html
November is a time to be thankful. What are you most thankful for this year?
I’m thankful for modern medicine, which has given my husband more years despite his brain cancer diagnosis.
Why is your featured book worth snuggling up to?
Readers will find love, laughter, family traditions, and amazing cooking. Perfect for a great snuggle read!
Giveaway –
One lucky reader will win a $100 Amazon gift card.
Open internationally.
Runs November 1 – 30, 2024
Drawing will be held on December 2, 2024.
Author Biography:
Born in Athens, Greece as an Air Force brat, Teri M Brown graduated from UNC Greensboro. She began her writing career helping small businesses with content creation and published five nonfiction self-help books dealing with real estate and finance, receiving multiple awards. In 2017, after winning the First Annual Anita Bloom Ornoff Award for Inspirational Short Story, she began writing fiction in earnest, and published her debut novel in 2022, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, a historical fiction set in Ukraine, which has won 12 awards. Her second novel published in 2023, An Enemy Like Me, takes place during WWII, winning 27 awards. Her third novel, Daughters of Green Mountain Gap, a generational story about Appalachian healers came out in January 2024 and has already won five awards. In June 2024, her short story, The Youngest Lighthouse Keeper, came out in the anthology Feisty Deeds: Historical Fictions of Daring Women. Her latest work coming out in February 2025, 10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure, is an inspirational look at the life lessons she learned riding across the United States on a tandem bicycle.
Teri is a wife, mother, grandmother, and author who loves word games, reading, bumming on the beach, taking photos, singing in the shower, hunting for bargains, ballroom dancing, playing bridge, and mentoring others. Learn more at www.terimbrown.com.
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