In the second book in the Smoky Mountain Dreams series, acclaimed author Sandra Robbins spins a tender tale of God’s faithfulness throughout the generations. Rani Martin, Simon and Anna’s only daughter, is a beautiful and spirited young woman living deep in the heart of the Smoky Mountains. She has plenty of ideas about the man she’ll marry someday, but none of them could have prepared her for the return of Matthew Jackson. Matthew left Cades Cove as a child after his father’s death. Now he’s come back to build a new life for himself, and it’s his dearest wish that Rani be a part of that life. But the people of the Cove won’t let him forget the sins of his father, and Matthew can’t forget the darkness of his own past. Is there a place for Matthew in the Cove? And can the light of Rani’s love overcome his pain?

"Inspirational historical romance"--Spine.

It's October 1945, and the gospel-singing Sanders Family is back together again. The war is over, and America's years of prosperity are just beginning. But there's another kind of rite of passage at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, where Reverend Mervin Oglethorpe is giving his last service. He's been called to preach in Texas, and he's already bought a ten-gallon hat and is preparing to ride into the sunset with his wife, June, who is eight months pregnant. Tomorrow morning, young Dennis Sanders

In The Gaithers and Southern Gospel, Ryan P. Harper examines songwriters Bill and Gloria Gaither's Homecoming video and concert series--a gospel music franchise that, since its beginning in 1991, has outperformed all Christian and much secular popular music on the American music market. The Homecomings represent "southern gospel." Typically that means a musical style popular among white evangelical Christians in the American South and Midwest, and it sometimes overlaps in style, theme, and audience with country music. The Homecomings' nostalgic orientation--their celebration of "traditional" kinds of American Christian life--harmonize well with southern gospel music, past and present. But amidst the backward gazes, the Homecomings also portend and manifest change. The Gaithers' deliberate racial integration of their stages, their careful articulation of a relatively inclusive evangelical theology, and their experiments with an array of musical forms demonstrate that the Homecoming is neither simplistically nostalgic, nor solely "southern." Harper reveals how the Gaithers negotiate a tension between traditional and changing community norms as they seek simultaneously to maintain and expand their audience as well as to initiate and respond to shifts within their fan base. Pulling from his field work at Homecoming concerts, behind the scenes with the Gaithers, and with numerous Homecoming fans, Harper reveals the Homecoming world to be a dynamic, complicated constellation in the formation of American religious identity.

Decoration Day is a late spring or summer tradition that involves cleaning a community cemetery, decorating it with flowers, holding a religious service in the cemetery, and having dinner on the ground. These commemorations seem to predate the post-Civil War celebrations that ultimately gave us our national Memorial Day. Little has been written about this tradition, but it is still observed widely throughout the Upland South, from North Carolina to the Ozarks. Written by internationally recognized folklorist Alan Jabbour and illustrated with more than a hundred photographs taken by Karen Singer Jabbour, Decoration Day in the Mountains is an in-depth exploration of this little-known cultural tradition. The Jabbours illuminate the meanings behind the rituals and reveal how the tradition fostered a grassroots movement to hold the federal government to its promises about cemeteries left behind when families were removed to make way for Fontana Dam and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Richly illustrated and vividly written, Decoration Day in the Mountains presents a compelling account of a widespread and long-standing Southern cultural practice.

After the government begins purchasing land to create the Great Smokey National Park, Laurel Jackson wants her family to keep their land and is torn when she finds herself attracted to the son of a wealthy congressman, who has been sent to persuade the families of Cades Cove to sell.

In recent years North Carolina has been recognized as a popular filming location for feature films and television series such as Last of the Mohicans and Dawson’s Creek. Few people, probably, realize that the first feature film in the state was shot in 1912. This comprehensive reference book provides a complete listing of every film, documentary, short, television program, newsreel, and promotional video in which at least some part was filmed in North Carolina, through the year 2000. The entries contain the following information: alternate titles, the type of film (feature film, television episode, etc), studio, cities, counties, scenes (Biltmore House, for example), comments (short synopses of the movies), director, producer, co-producer, executive producer, cinematographer, writer, music and casting credits, additional crew, and cast.

In the most extensive work to date on major poets from the mountain South, John Lang explores the pervasive religious and spiritual concerns of many of the mountain South's finest writers, including Fred Chappell, Robert Morgan, Jeff Daniel Marion, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Jim Wayne Miller, and Charles Wright. He employs close readings of the poets' work and relates it to British and American Romanticism as well as contemporary eco-theology and eco-criticism, creating the most ambitious and searching foray yet into the worlds of these renowned post-World War II Appalachian poets.

The Great Smoky Mountains, at the border of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, are among the highest peaks of the southern Appalachian chain. Although this area shares much with the cultural traditions of all southern Appalachia, the folklife here has been uniquely shaped by historical events, including the Cherokee Removal of the 1830s and the creation of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park a century later. This book surveying the rich folklife of this special place in the American South offers a view of the culture as it has been defined and changed by scholars, missionaries, the federal government, tourists, and people of the region themselves. Here is an overview of the history of a beautiful landscape, one that examines the character typified by its early settlers, by the displacement of the people, and by the manner in which the folklife was discovered and defined during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Here also is an examination of various folk traditions and a study of how they have changed and evolved.

More than Precious Memories is the first book of its kind--a collection of essays offering scholarly analysis and interpretation of Southern Gospel Music. Believing Southern Gospel Music to be a significant cultural and religious phenomenon worthy of the best efforts of scholarship, Grayes and Fillingim have assembled a diverse group of scholars who apply a variety of methods and theories to the task of understanding Southern Gospel Music and its cultural context. These scholars and approaches include the following. - Scott Tucker, looks at the theme of "heaven" in six of the Gaither Homecoming songbooks - David Fillingim looks at how Southern Gospel Music answers the question of theodicy from the perspective of the rural white, working class - Robert M. McManus explores selected song lyrics to show how Southern - Gospel Music helps construct the identity of the community compared to Contemporary Christian Music - Darlene R. Graves identifies key sustaining personality strengths of women that tend to preserve consistency between their public performance and personal spiritual walk - Elizabeth F. Desnoyers Colas and Stephanie Howard (Asabi) explore Southern Gospel and Black Gospel music through the influence of Thomas A. Dorsey - Michael Graves examines how the culture of Southern Gospel Music deals with its inevitable prodigal sons - Raymond D.S. Anderson analyzes the Gaither Homecoming videos as examples of the postmodern turn in American popular Christian culture - John D. Keeler presents the first audience study of Southern Gospel Music employing a "Uses and Gratifications" research framework - Paul A. Creasman examines the ways Southern Gospel Musicas a culture memorializes its dead by use of the Internet - Naaman Wood reviews significant scholarly approaches to the study of popular music.