In this memoir, author Jeremy Jones tells how his journey into understanding how his native Appalachian mountain culture shaped him and its people. After traveling and living in Honduras, Jones returned to Bearwallow in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He and his wife moved into a small house above the creek where his family had settled 200 years prior, and he took a job teaching immigrant children alongside his former teachers in the local elementary school. Jones, who teaches creative writing at Western Carolina, meshes narrative and myth, geology and genealogy, to reveal the changing and often stigmatized world of southern Appalachians. His explorations include hunting buried treasure and POW camps, unearthing Civil War graves and family feuds, discussing gated communities and tourist traps, and encountering changed accents and immigrant populations. “Bearwallow: A Personal History Of A Mountain Homeland” is hardcover, 288 pages $24.95; e-book is $9.99.

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