|
BLOODROOT
by
William F. Kaiser
BLOODROOT covers events that occurred during the Civil War in the remote Blue Ridge mountains of Western
North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. While a work of fiction it presents realistically the upheaval in southern Appalachian
society by the events of that war ... Events that still echo today in the towns, villages and "hollars" in these mountains.
Events of the Civil War still effect our national psyche.
The current dispute of the display of the Confederate flag is just one example. Government and civilian battles to save historic
battlefields from destruction by Mall developers are ongoing today in the Southern States.
Many of the events in BLOODROOT did occur. Presidents and generals and a few other real persons as well as significant
war events are presented as described in most texts.
BLOODROOT however, is a work of fiction. Most of the people in this story are of my creation. Any resemblance to living
persons, present or past, is coincidental.
Some of you no doubt will find some coincidences.
Some few places in BLOODROOT, namely mountains and rivers and gaps and trails, are real. Others I've made up and given
names of my choice.
The trees, shrubs, flowers, herbs, animals, snakes, birds, fish and like are as accurately described as my research permits.
As are the foods, clothes, tools, arms and other implements.
As for the acts in BLOODROOT of heroism, brutality, sacrifice, depravity, courage and cowardliness, hope, hate and
love, they are no more than my humble attempt to portray human nature as I see it.
THE MAJOR CHARACTERS OF BLOODROOT ARE:
William John (Billy Jack) Truehill
He was born 1841 in Lincolnton, North Carolina; he is orphaned at age 8; his mother's brother, Harris Sherritt, takes Billy
Jack into the mountains to grow up.
When book one opens, it is August 1860; Billy Jack is 19; minimally educated; he can read and write a little but is learned
in the ways of the forest and mountains.
Billy Jack holds the mountain people convictions of independence and god-given rights; he is "Southern," honest, stubborn,
anti-outsiders, not much concerned with people or events outside his environment -- yet he has a vague restlessness and curiosity
about the world outside of the mountains.
Elvira Mayberry Heath Johnson
She was born in 1835 and raised in New York City; her family is upper middle class; she has been well educated in private
schools. In January 1858 she is forced to marry the Methodist Reverend Hiram Johnson. He is 25 years her senior. She does
not love him. In March 1858 the Reverend is sent by the church to the Western North Carolina mountains as a Missionary. She
is forced to go with him.
Elvira May, when the story opens in August 1860, is 25 years old. She is a widow, the Reverend having died of fever. She
is struggling to survive on an isolated patch farm in a cove in the mountains.
She is strongly anti-Southern, pro-Union, and "looks down" at the "ignorant" mountain people; she desperately wants to find
a way to return to New York, but won't accept her father's help.
Brady McBigger
A mountain man, moonshiner, self-righteous, mean-spirited. As eldest of the clan of "McBiggers," he "runs" McBiggerville,
a rambling settlement of ramshackle cabins, farm fields, corn cribs, and a whiskey still. He owns a run-down "general store"
and post office. He will cheat, steal, even kill in the name of "bein' in the right."
He is a staunch Confederate; considers it his duty to rout out any pro-Union mountain folk. He represents the worst of the
mountain man characteristics, yet many mountain folk admire him for his stubborn clinging to the old ways of "Southern" mountain
life.
Benton McBigger
Younger brother of Brady McBigger; a braggart and a coward, a "follower" of his older brother. He swears to his brother to
seek vengeance against all unionists and all who support them. He is a weak leader and his attempt to "run" the McBigger clan
is a failure. He is sneaky and vicious in attempting to live up to his oath to his brother.
THE SETTING OF BLOODROOT
The primary setting of BLOODROOT is a fictional North Carolina mountain county, Afton, and its county seat, Somerset.
The fictional setting is a lot like the real North Carolina county of Watauga and its county seat of Boone as they were in
1860.
My characters play out their lives against a cast of dozens of characters, real and fictional, in events of 1860 to 1865,
real events and fictional events that echo real events.
Read excerpts from BLOODROOT
|
Order from Amazon BLOODROOT: A Novel of the Civil War
BLOODROOT is the first of a Southern Appalachian family saga from the time of the Civil War to the present. The sequel
to BLOODROOT is now in development. With a working title of WHITE RIDERS, the novel follows the Truehill and
McBigger families as the Ku Klux Klan rises from the ashes of the Civil War to threaten, torment, rape, plunder and murder
Mountain folk. The Truehill family, Billy Jack and Elvira May, struggle to overcome the differences in their heritages as
KKK raiders split the loyaltties of whites and blacks in the aftermath of the Northern victory, "Emancipation" and "Reconstruction."
William F. "Bill" Kaiser * North Carolina Writer
 |
