Accepting Appalachia

I grew up on the edges of Appalachia—southeastern Ohio, right on the River, with a capital R. On hot days, the air smelled like silt and fish.

Growing up, I made a point of saying wash instead of worsh, and I consciously focused on erasing the twang from my words. (For what it’s worth, I’ve stopped doing that now, and simply let it roll. I live in the north now, and frankly, I just miss hearing the sound, even if my own accent is nowhere near as thick as others’…)

Being in Appalachia felt like a weight—almost as heavy as the summer humidity, ready to sink me in that silt. Doomed and cursed, rooted in a mud that did not give way to dreaming bigger. In fact, dreaming bigger was scoffed at, laughed at, and then caused anger: Who do you think are? You’re not better than anyone else. For me, there was no beauty to be found there—no softness, no elegance—only strife, poverty, and pain.

The only way to survive it was to escape it.

There Are Different Kinds of Poverty

When I was about sixteen, I witnessed a sight that has been imprinted on my mind forever: a little girl—maybe five?—barefoot and wearing a stained and tattered white dress or long shirt. Dirt streaked her arms and legs as she ran on a gravel road through a trailer park, her tangled and matted hair sticking every which way, chasing some other kids. She carried a rusty axe. (For those local, this was in the Lucasville Bottoms.)

I think what threw me off was that the poor people I’d known up until then—including my own family—had been fastidiously tidy and clean—about everything: “We might not be rich, but we’re not dirty” was a common saying I’d grown up with.

Dream Big—But Not Too Big

Through my teens, I watched the older women around me, and most were openly unhappy. There was a lot of laughter, but it was usually at someone else’s expense.

I didn’t see many of them setting personal goals or striving to change their situations—perhaps because they were too busy putting food on the table. In the eighth grade, our guidance counselors told us we should talk to our parents about college funds or savings. That afternoon, I asked my mom, and she laughed. The thought of “college savings” was that ridiculous.

If I wanted to go to college, I was on my own.

I kept my grades at the top, at age 12 started cleaning my aunt’s house down the street for a little cash, and as soon as I was a junior in high school, took advantage of the dual enrollment program to take a few college classes while still in high school. Anything to get ahead.

I earned a full ride to the nearby Ohio University Southern.

Once there, I took full course loads every single quarter—even in the summers—often up to eighteen or even twenty credit hours a quarter. One or two quarters, I had to get permission to take even more.

On top of that, it was my norm to have at least two jobs and sometimes as many as four to make ends meet, as I was expected to work 20 hours a week on campus for my scholarship: I cleaned department stores at six a.m.; clerked at bookstores; trained horses; taught riding lessons; cleaned houses; walked dogs; worked long hours at vet clinics; worked in the campus libraries and computer labs; assisted professors; I even worked at a boat rental booth for a nearby lake—literally, anything that might help.

Finding a Sense of History

In the last year of my undergrad, I took a work study job at the Kennedy Museum of Art in Athens, Ohio, housed in a former asylum where lobotomies were done regularly. The “equipment” was still on the grounds, and most of the buildings were locked up as they were dangerously dilapidated. My job was to sit in that massive main building every Thursday evening until eight and again on the weekends—in the eerie quiet space where every whisper echoed. I became quite good at using plastic trash bins to capture lost bats to release them outside (that part had not been mentioned in the job ad).

That year, the museum had an exhibit on Appalachian art—just as the museum in my novel, Whippoorwill Sing. Unlike Atlas in Whippoorwill, I worked with a curator who did in fact know what she was doing—and the resulting exhibit changed my view on my own heritage.

Through that exhibit, I spent an afternoon manning a nearby theatre where a film about Appalachian history played on a loop. I don’t recall the details, but as I sat in the overly air conditioned theatre, I watched the many clips of work-and-world-weary women play, again and again.

Their faces were deeply etched and their clothes tattered. They were usually balancing a baby on a hip with several others at their feet on wooden porches or in fields.

But their heads were held high, and their eyes were defiant. Daring. Challenging.

When the world presents yet another “how could this possibly happen/how could people be so cruel” event, I often find myself feeling guilt because the event usually leads to my wanting to hole up on our little farm in upstate New York and block out the outside world. Add a few things to the garden. Build the fence a little higher.

And then the thought pushes in: How you think your people lived this long? How you think they survived all that, in them mountains and valleys? Holing up on the farm, adding a bit more to the garden, and building the fence a little higher—that’s how.

Relationship Status: It’s Complicated.

At the same time, I’m not necessarily a “proud Appalachian”. My own extended family has been decimated by misogyny, drug-use, and open cruelty. Family stories were not, “Remember so-and-so? She was so kind…” They were more, “Remember Granny? The one that held Bud’s hands to the wood stove as punishment when he was a little boy?” Stories about beatings, violence, and cruelty.

No wonder I am the worst kind of Appalachian--the kind that earned a degree and got the hell out of there.

And yet, those mountains run through my veins, too, and survival is something I am more than familiar with.

Appalachia as a region is often misunderstood—maybe it defies the very notion of being understood, even by those of us who grew up there—but I hope Whippoorwill Sing will add another angle to consider.

Whippoorwill Sing, Coming June 1, 2026 from Thorncraft Publishing