Ann H. Gabhart has been called a storyteller. With 39 published books, the title fits. Ann wraps her stories around Kentucky historical times and settings. She’s written about Shakers in The Outsider and others, explored Appalachian history for These Healing Hills, An Appalachian Summer and Along a Storied Trail, mined family history for Angel Sister, Scent of Lilacs, and more. In her recent release, In the Shadow of the River, she dropped her characters down on a showboat on the Ohio River. For her 2024 release, Ann headed back to the Appalachian Mountains for The Song of Sourwood Mountain. Publisher’s Weekly says, “Gabhart sensitively portrays both the challenges of mountain life—poverty, harsh weather, disease—and the heart and warmth of this hardscrabble community.” Ann keeps her keyboard warm on her Kentucky farm where her dogs, Frankie and Marley, make sure she gets plenty of exercise. Find more at www.annhgabhart.com.
The Song of Sourwood Mountain
Though the twentieth century dawned with such promise, it is just 1910 when Mira Dean’s hopes of being a wife and mother are dashed to pieces. Her fiancé is dead from tuberculosis and Mira must resign herself to being a spinster schoolteacher. But then Gordon Covington shows up and the doors that once seemed shut forever begin to open—even if only a crack.
No longer the boy she knew from school, Gordon is now a preacher who is full of surprises. First, he asks Mira to come to Sourwood in eastern Kentucky to teach at his mission school. Second, he asks her to marry him. Just like that.
Though the prospect of stepping onto a new path is scary, Mira takes a leap of faith and lands in a life she never imagined. In this place filled with its own special challenges, the people she serves just might end up becoming the family she always yearned for.