Bearwallow: A Personal History of a Mountain Homeland (2014). Bearwallow was named the 2014 Appalachian Book of the Year in nonfiction and was awarded gold in the 2015 Independent Publisher Book (IPPY) Awards in memoir. His essays have been published in Oxford American, Garden and Gun, The Bitter Southerner, and Brevity, among others. He also writes frequently for Our State Magazine. Jones earned his MFA from the University of Iowa and is a professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University, in his native North Carolina. He also serves as the series co-editor for In Place: a literary nonfiction book series from WVU Press.
At Lit Hub the author tagged seven "beautifully complicated books about complicated family histories," including:
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love, Dani ShapiroRead about the other titles on the list.
Shapiro’s memoir doesn’t reach back generations in its initial framing—she discovers through genetic testing that her father was not her biological father—but the explorations that follow are far-reaching. At the heart of her search is the age-old nature vs. nurture question, which then splinters into a thousand other questions about the stories we tell about ourselves. The book moves quickly, narrative-driven with relatively short chapters, and pieces together as a complicated and earnest origin story.
Inheritance is among Thao Thai's seven books about gripping family secrets.
--Marshal Zeringue
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