Years ago, I met the lovely Stephanie Ray Brown, a Kentucky book woman in her own right and daughter of another female coal miner. Stephanie introduced me to her retired mother, Rita Ray, who graciously granted me an interview. I learned what it was like for the first female coal miners trying to eke out a living beside male miners, their challenges, dangers, and difficulties.
I love imparting snippets of Kentucky’s vital history in my stories. You’ll find one of my characters, Amara Ballard, was inspired by the historical Kentucky Frontier Nursing Service founded by Mary Breckinridge in the 1920s. To learn more about these amazing women who were nurses on horseback in eastern Kentucky, I recommend Wide Neighborhoods by Mary Breckinridge.
We get a small glimpse into the important historical Moonlight Schools, another of just one of the many prolific and critical Kentucky contributions to the world. The inimitable schools were established in 1911 by Cora Wilson Stewart, to foster literacy among adults. Later, the Moonlight Schools would go on to serve Black and Native American students in other regions of America.
I enjoy exploring authentic Appalachian food in my research travels. Like its music and folklore, Appalachian meals are an intimate celebratory tradition and the very breath of the region and its people. From summer harvests of vine-ripened vegetables to late blackberry and early fall apple picking that shifts quietly into the hog-killing tradition during cold weather, food is church. Fellowship and conversations rise and fall lyrically over and around slow-roasting firepits and inside busy kitchens brimming with large simmering pots and sizzling cast-iron skillets. You’ll find twine-pinned walls dangling with leathered fruits, beans, and peppers, tables laden with platters of smoked meats, and shelves stuffed with pickles, relishes, jams, and other delightful assortments of prized canning.
Long ago, I earned a degree in legal studies at the university and have always enjoyed law and research, particularly studying older laws. I was able to interview and pick the astute mind of the Honorable Judge Susan Gibson, who enlightened me with wonderful, thoughtful discussions and shared archaic and revelatory case laws.
Additionally, I couldn’t have written the courtroom scenes without the superb suggestions and critical eye of brilliant lawyer and award-winning author G. J. Berger.
As with Junia the mule, Tommie the rooster provided a fun topic for research that sent me delving into newspaper articles, journals, rooster care, and more. Award-winning author Bren McClain was an absolute delight explaining roosters to me while I listened to her various mocked rooster calls, and we discussed their meanings in between.
People often ask about the region’s dialect. As a Kentuckian, I would love to be writing in the vernacular of Kentucky author Harriette Arnow. The language and its literary portrayal and eye phonetics in Arnow’s brilliant The Dollmaker are music, a gravelly hymnal of haunting songs which I prize. It and the people are clearly inseparable.
I’m a big fan of and appreciate different dialects, whether from north, south, east, west, or across the big ponds, so I find it sad when language gets stripped or lost. But using native language is not always possible because not everyone reading is a native or would be able to follow it easily. It’s tricky to find balance when no one set language was in use across all Kentucky lands, especially in the southern mountains of Appalachia.
While most of the archaic language in the southern mountains has Scots-Irish origins, a lot of the turns of phrase and words evolve from the people living here. Yonder becomes yander and poke is a bag or sack, tote means carry, coming and going changes to a’comin’ and a’goin’。 Swarp and scrape mean to fight, hit, or strike, and words like fire and light drop the i and become far and laht—just a few examples. And to this day, I pronounce breakfast as brehfuss, but some outsiders laughed so much that I became ashamed to say it and called it the morning meal instead, rarely writing the word in a novel until now. My wash sounds like warsh, and I had absently titled a novel The Washed Light Off Ebenezer Road, only to change it when others poked fun and couldn’t understand my pronunciation.
Speech will even vary from town to town and holler to holler. I have a relative who comes from another pocket in Kentucky whose words even I find difficult to pronounce or understand. I’ve pulled back on some of the language rhythms, but hope you’ll understand I couldn’t sacrifice all of the local language and have kept some of the authenticity and beauty of it.