North Carolina Reads

Fiction. In 1869 a kingdom rose in the South. And Louella was its queen. When the honorable Reverend William finally listens to Louella’s pleas and leads the formerly enslaved people out of their plantation, Louella begins to feel hope. Soon, William and Louella become the appointed king and queen of their self-proclaimed Kingdom of the Happy Land. And though they are still surrounded by opposition, they continue to share a message of joy and goodness–and fight for the freedom and dignity of all. Transformative and breathtakingly honest, The American Queen is based on actual events that occurred between 1865 – 1889 and shares the unsung history of a Black woman who built a kingdom in Appalachia as a refuge for the courageous people who dared to dream of a different way of life.

Nonfiction. Environmental scientist Ryan E. Emanuel, a member of the Lumbee tribe, shares stories from North Carolina about Indigenous survival and resilience in the face of radical environmental changes. Addressing issues from the loss of wetlands to the arrival of gas pipelines, these stories connect the dots between historic patterns of Indigenous oppression and present-day efforts to promote environmental justice and Indigenous rights on the swamp. Emanuel’s scientific insight and deeply personal connections to his home blend together in a book that is both a heartfelt and an analytical call to acknowledge and protect sacred places.

Nonfiction. Depictions of Appalachian food culture and practices often romanticize people in the region as good, simple, and, often, white. These stereotypes are harmful to the actual people they are meant to describe as well as to those they exclude. In Hungry Roots: How Food Communicates Appalachia’s Search for Resilience, Ashli Quesinberry Stokes and Wendy Atkins-Sayre tell a more complicated story. The authors embark on a cultural tour through food and drinking establishments to investigate regional resilience in and through the plurality of traditions and communities that form the foodways of Southern Appalachia.

Fiction. It’s the 1960s in North Carolina and Lorraine Delford has it all – an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, and an idyllic home complete with a white picket fence. Yet every time she looks through her father’s telescope, she dreams of leaving it all behind to go to space. But when this darling girl-next-door gets pregnant, she’s forced to learn firsthand the realities that keep women grounded. To hide their daughter’s secret shame, the Delfords send Lorraine to a maternity home for wayward girls. But this is no safe haven – it’s a house with dark secrets and suffocating rules. And as Lorraine begins to piece together a new vision for her life, she must decide if she has the power to fight for the future she wants or if she must submit to the rules of a society she once admired.

Nonfiction. A musician’s musician, Doc grew up on a subsistence farm in the North Carolina mountains during the Depression, soaking up traditional music and learning to play guitar even though he was blind. Rising to fame in the 1960s as part of the burgeoning folk revival scene, Doc became the face of traditional music for many listeners, racking up multiple Grammys and releasing dozens of albums over the course of his long career. Eddie Huffman tells the story of Doc’s life and legacy, drawing on extensive interviews and hundreds of hours of archival research. Full of fascinating stories—from Doc’s first banjo made from his grandmother’s cat to the founding of MerleFest—this promises to be the definitive biography of the man and how he came to be synonymous with roots music in America and shows how his influence is still felt in music today.