Orem Library

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves,...

Midwife Patience Murphy has a gift: a talent for escorting mothers through the challenges of bringing children into the world. Working in the hardscrabble conditions of Appalachia during the Depression, Patience takes the jobs that no one else wants, helping those most in need--and least likely to pay. She knows a successful midwifery practice must be built on a foundation of openness and trust--but the secrets Patience is keeping are far too intimate...

Everywhere about her, from the traffic on Highway 460 to the river that's gone black with coal dust, Crystal Spangler sees a current flowing from the mountain town of Black Rock into the wider world. As a teenager, she is elected beauty queen, gets good grades, and-despite her many enviable qualities-manages also to be well-loved. Everyone knows that she is destined to leave town and do great things. And she does. But no one expects her return; drawn...

A family living in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1930s gets books to read during the regular visits of the "Book Woman"--a librarian who rides a pack horse through the mountains, lending books to the isolated residents.

"The Powell brothers, Muir and Moody, are as different as Cain and Abel. Muir is an innocent, a shy young man with big dreams and not the slightest idea of what to do about them. Moody, the older and wilder brother--embittered by the death of his father, by years of fighting his mother, and by his jealousy of Muir's privileged place in the family--takes to moonshine and gambling and turns his anger on his brother. Muir escapes, hoping to find something--an...

"Cussy Mary Carter is the last of her kind, her skin the color of a blue damselfly in these dusty hills. But that doesn't mean she's got nothing to offer. As a member of the Pack Horse Library Project, Cussy delivers books to the hill folk of Troublesome, hoping to spread learning in these desperate times. But not everyone is so keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and the hardscrabble Kentuckians are quick to blame a Blue for any trouble...

Every year at Christmas a rich man rides a train through Appalachia and throws gifts to the poor children who are waiting, in order to repay a debt he owes the people who live there.

Twenty years after her childhood friend Lauren disappeared, Nicola returns to her Appalachian hometown where she, driven by a desperate need to know what happened to Lauren, obsessively searches for the truth in a place where the answers are tucked in the hollows and valleys of this small Blue Ridge community.

A tale told from myriad viewpoints follows a family from the Great Depression to the present, describing the experiences of a wild young mountain girl, her protective grandmother, the men who love her, and the children who struggle to manage her legacy.

With the ability to see into minds and souls, Thea, who brought her parents' killer to justice years ago, discovers the inmate who shattered her childhood has the same ability when she can hear his twisted thoughts and witness his evil acts from miles away as he plots his revenge.