“Land is who we are,” says Randall Stargill, a character in my Appalachian novel The Rosewood Casket. In a way, they were back home, though it would be two centuries later before anyone realized that geological miracle. I wondered if their answers echo the feelings of their pioneer ancestors two centuries ago, who, having to homestead in a strange land, chose a place that reminded them of home. They were right: it did look like Bland County, even though it was half a world away. “Bland County,” they would say, naming a county between here and Tennessee. “It looks right,” I say.Ī month later I went home to southwest Virginia with a photograph of that landscape of Scottish countryside, and I passed it around to the neighbors. I look out at the sweep of field and forested hills surrounding us, and I feel a sense of calm.
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