Books and more at Pocahontas County Free Libraries

Cree Lahti, Director
PCFL

Sharon McCrumb will be at the Hillsboro Public Library Saturday, October 28, to discuss her newest work of fiction, The Unquiet Grave.

Carter Taylor Seaton will be at Linwood Community Library Thursday, November 2, and at McClintic Library Saturday, November 4, to discuss her newest biography – The Rebel in a Red Jeep – about prominent West Virginia politician Ken Hechler.

A potluck supper at 6 p.m. will kick things off Saturday at the Hillsboro Library with McCrumb’s presentation beginning at 7 p.m. This event is sponsored by the Friends of the Hillsboro Library. The Unquiet Grave, will be available for purchase at the event.  

The Unquiet Grave, released in September 2017, is a novel retelling the folk-tale of the Greenbrier Ghost. A month after Zona Heaster’s death in 1879 from a reported fall, her ghost appears to her mother saying that she had been murdered. An autopsy confirms it.  It is the only case in America in which a killer was convicted because of the testimony of a ghost. In The Unquiet Grave, the story is told from the perspective of James P.D. Gardner, a young African- Amer- ican attorney who second-chaired the defense. McCrumb used a century of genealogical material and historical documents to bring this folk-tale to life. 

Carter Taylor Seaton will be at the Linwood Community Library Thursday, November 2, at 7 p.m. and at McClintic Library Saturday, November 4, at noon. The Rebel in the Red Jeep: Ken Hechler’s Life in West Virginia Politics will be available for purchase. Light refreshments will be served.

The Rebel in the Red Jeep was published in 2017 by West Virginia University Press and covers Hechler’s 100 years: from his birth on a vast Long Island estate to his years in Washington, to his retirement fighting against the destruction of the West Virginia mountains he adopted as home.

Hechler’s biography includes his work as a speechwriter for President Harry Truman,  serving in the US Congress and as the West Virginia Secretary of State, as well as being arrested at age 94 during a protest against mountaintop removal mining.
 
All five libraries have copies of both books if you would like to read the book before the presentations. We hope you can join us in welcoming these talented authors to Pocahontas County.