Cataloochee

“A brilliant portrait of a community and a way of life long gone, a lost America.”
–Charles Frazier

Against the breathtaking backdrop of Appalachia comes a rich, multilayered post—Civil War saga of three generations of families–their dreams, their downfalls, and their faith. Cataloochee is a slice of southern Americana told in the classic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner.

Nestled in the mountains of North Carolina sits Cataloochee. In a time when “where you was born was where God wanted you,” the Wrights and the Carters, both farming families, travel to the valley to escape the rapid growth of neighboring towns and to have a few hundred acres all to themselves. But progress eventually winds its way to Cataloochee, too, and year after year the population swells as more people come to the valley to stake their fortune.

Never one to pass on opportunity, Ezra Banks, an ambitious young man seeking some land of his own, arrives in Cataloochee in the 1880s. His first order of business is to marry a Carter girl, Hannah, the daughter of the valley’s largest landowner. From there Ezra’s brood grows, as do those of the Carters and the Wrights. With hard work and determination, the burgeouning community transforms wilderness into home, to be passed on through generations.

But the idyll is not to last, nor to be inherited: The government takes steps to relocate folks to make room for the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and tragedy will touch one of the clans in a single, unimaginable act.

Wayne Caldwell brings to life the community’s historic struggles and close kinships over a span of six decades. Full of humor, darkness, beauty, and wisdom, Cataloochee is a classic novel of place and family.

Publishers Weekly

The first time Ezra Banks sees the promised land called Cataloochee is when he runs away at age 14 and joins the Confederate army. So begins first-time novelist Caldwell's rambling account of life in the western mountains of North Carolina from 1864 to 1928. Land-poor Ezra returns to Cataloochee in 1880, marries Hannah Carter of the land-rich Carter family, takes over some of her father's property and goes on to raise a family and acquire more land, making him one of the wealthiest men in Cataloochee. But cantankerous Ezra is mean as a snake when he's drunk (and only slightly less when sober), earning him the community's enmity. The diffuse narrative moseys from one folksy yarn to the next about the fates of various members of the Carter/Banks clan. Late in the novel, conflict arrives in the form of the government's appropriation of Cataloochee to make way for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Then, Ezra, 78 and as irascible as ever, is shot to death, and his eldest son, Zeb, is charged with his murder. The ensuing trial is as singular as Cataloochee itself. A meandering and diverting collection of tangential yarns, Caldwell's debut will find a spot on many readers' shelves near Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons. (May)

Wayne Caldwell was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Appalachian State University, and Duke University. He began writing fiction in the late 1990s. He has published four short stories and a poem, and won two short story prizes. Caldwell lives near Asheville with his wife, Mary. Cataloochee is his first novel.