Eric Douglas, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Novel Looks At Appalachia Through Eyes Of Sisters

Author Bonnie Proudfoot began working on her new novel “Goshen Road” nearly 25 years ago, but she said she had to get older before she had the confidence to finish it. The story follows two sisters growing up in northern West Virginia, beginning as teens in 1967.

She described the book as women-centered Appalachian fiction, although she was quick to point out that not every chapter was told from a woman’s point of view.

She explained the book is told in “linked narratives” meaning that each individual chapter could almost stand alone as a short story, but the same characters are in each chapter.

“Really at the heart of it is the story of two women who come to terms with who they really are. And they can look the world squarely in the eyes on their own terms. But they needed to go through a lot,” Proudfoot said.

She added that what she wanted to convey to the reader was how much family means, how much the land itself means and how much the two rely on each other, both in good and bad times.

While she tries to leave it vague, the book is set in a fictional town and county, in north central West Virginia. She said a lot of people ask her if it is set in Fairmont, and she replies, “No, it is smaller.”

Another familiar reference for readers, and people who drive Interstate 79, is in the name of the book — Goshen Road. It is an exit between Clarksburg and Morgantown, West Virginia.

Proudfoot said when she started writing the book, the title ‘Goshen Road’ was a given, both for its local reference and to the Land of Goshen from the Old Testament.

She said her characters were “so tied to place and the place itself figures largely in the book.” Adding that it is “kind of a spiritual force.”

The promotional materials for the book describe it as “elegiac” meaning pertaining to an “elegy.” The book itself covers the lives of the characters from 1967 to 1992.

“This harks back to the past when there was still a vestige of cultural inheritance. People did canning. They went hunting, they knew how to make some form of living off of the land and not everything was material,” Proudfoot said. “They traded for things. It’s an elegy a little bit in that regard. Things have gotten harder, economically speaking, since that novel.”

“Goshen Road” is Proudfoot’s debut novel and it is available through the Ohio University Press. She is a fiction writer, a poet and a glass artist.

This interview is part of an occasional series of Appalachian Author Interviews with authors from, or writing about, the region.

Use Online Time With Family To Record Family Stories

Many families have turned to video conferencing apps like Zoom and Skype to stay connected during the coronavirus pandemic. Those online conversations can also serve a larger purpose — to capture family oral histories.

Oral histories are, at their simplest, recordings of memories. They have been around since the earliest days of reel-to-reel tape recorders. Documentarians or researchers would head out into the field to record the memories of people who survived grand events in human history. In the process, they also recorded local music and tall tales.

While the technology used to capture oral histories has changed over the years, the need to record family memories has never been greater. As older generations pass away, the stories of how things happened and how we came to be who we are passes away, too.

Stan Bumgardner, the editor of Goldenseal Magazine, said oral histories capture the emotions attached to a memory.

“If it was an important event in your life, you certainly remember how it made you feel,” he said. “ You remember how it affected the people around you. And that’s from good to awful, to funny, to tragic.”

Getting Started

During this socially distant time, many families are using online software to stay in touch. Most have the option to record the conversation built directly into the application.

To get started, make sure you tell everyone on the call that you are recording it and then just talk, said Francene Kirk, interim director of the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center in Fairmont.

Kirk said to begin, ask a few leading questions and listen to the answers. You can’t want “yes” or “no” answers. Here are few examples.

Tell me about your family/tell me about your people.
What was it like where you grew up?
What do you remember about your parents? Going to school?

She said if you want to know more about a story, or need clarification on what they’re telling you, try repeating the last couple of words.
“So when my grandmother said, ‘I sat there and all those wet underwear,’ I said, ‘wet underwear?’ and you just make it sound like a question,” Kirk said. “And then she launched on what she wore to school.”

But aside from having those memories and voices recorded, Kirk thinks there’s another benefit of collecting oral histories.

“I think it’s about figuring out who you are, and why you are who you are,” she said.

For Bumgardner, oral histories are great for capturing sensory experiences.

“People can remember their grandmother baking an apple pie. And they don’t have the recipe for it. And they have no clue how to make it themselves, but they know exactly 50 years later, what it smelled like when it was baking, and how it tasted and how it made them feel when they ate it,” he said.

When recording an oral history, the best thing you can do as a listener is to be quiet, Bumgardner says.

“Especially with elderly people, sometimes they’ll have to fumble around for a memory for a few minutes, and you just want to jump in and help them and all you’re doing is kind of shutting them up,” he said.

Even experts like Bumgardner make the mistake of talking during an interview. He said when he listens to oral histories he recorded early in his career he wants to yell at himself to be quiet. But having an imperfect one is still better than not having any recording at all.

Once those stories are recorded, you’ll have them forever. The sound of your loved one’s voice is just a click away.

Resources

If you are looking for more help recording oral histories, these are helpful resources.

Pandemic Emails Provide Surprising Inspiration For W.Va. Poet

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Jessica Salfia began receiving emails from companies she had interacted with over the years. Most said the similar things, like how they “cared about their customers” and were “looking after their employees.”

Instead of just deleting those emails, Salfia, who is a creative writing teacher from Martinsburg, W.Va., saw the makings of a poem.

Salfia said she encourages her students to keep a “writer’s notebook,” an informal writing journal to record things for writing about later.

So a few weeks ago as Salfia was reading the marketing emails, instead of deleting them she pulled out her writer’s notebook.

“The language was very intense. Everyone was trying really hard to sound sincere. And I kept seeing these same phrases pop up over and over again,” she said.

Some of the phrases included “In these uncertain times,” “As you know, many people are struggling” and “We hope this finds you and your family safe.”

“It all started to sound very lyrical to me,” she said.

As the pandemic moved on, she also noted a change in the language. She said it moved from true sincerity to marketing veiled as sincerity — she recorded those phrases, too.

Finally, Salfia used the first lines from many of those marketing emails to write a poem and it went viral on Twitter. As of May 1, it had more than 46,000 shares and 169,000 likes.

Salfia said she thinks the reason her poem has resonated with people is that those emails are something that many of us have received. She added that she has gotten emails and comments from people who think the poem is hilarious and others have thought it was moving, sad and poignant.

“I teach a unit on ‘Art as Argument’ to my Advanced Placement Language and Composition students. We focus mostly on visual art and we talk a lot about how art is subjective. And that audience really plays a role in how art is interpreted and that’s the goal of good art,” she said.

“People can bring to it the thing that they need to bring to it. Or take away from it the thing that they need to take away from it and so the reactions to it have been really diverse.”

The First Lines of Emails I’ve Received While Quarantining

By Jessica Salfia

In these uncertain times as we navigate the new normal, Are you willing to share your ideas and solutions? As you know, many people are struggling.

I know you're up against it: the digital landscape. We share your concerns. As you know, many people are struggling.

We hope this note finds you and your family safe. We've never seen anything like this before. Here are 25 Distance Learning Tips! As you know, many people are struggling.

Feeling Fiesta today? Happy Taco Tuesday! Calories don't count during a pandemic. Grocers report flour shortages as more people are baking than ever! As you know, many people are struggling.

Count your blessings. Share your blessings. Get free curb-side pickup or shipped to your house! Chicken! Lemon! Artichokes! As you know, many people are struggling.

How are you inspiring greatness today? We have a cure for your cabin fever. Pandemic dial-in town hall TONIGHT! As you know, many people are struggling.

Mother's Day looks a little different this year. You're invited to shop all jeans for 50% off. Yes, buy 1, get 1free! As you know many people are struggling.

Call us to discuss a loan extension without penalty. ACT NOW: Tell Congress Charters should Not Line their Pockets During the COVID crisis. Now shipping face masks as recommended by the CDC. As you know many people are struggling.

This is not normal.

Rainbow Girl Murders Book Stirs Modern Controversy

On June 25, 1980, Vicki Durian and Nancy Santomero were killed in Pocahontas County. They were on the way to the Rainbow Family Gathering, an annual meeting of hippies and other like-minded people that celebrate peace, harmony and freedom held at different national forests across the country.

The murders captivated the region for decades. Local resident Jacob Beard was convicted of the murder in 1993, but he was later acquitted of all charges in a second trial in 2000. Joseph Paul Franklin, a white supremacist and serial killer, confessed to the murders. Franklin was put to death in 2013 for a different murder. He was never tried for the murders of the Rainbow Girls.

On its face, Emma Copley Eisenberg’s new book “The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia,” is a true crime read about the 1980 murders of these two women.

But the story is also about its author. Eisenberg learned of the murders when she was working in the county as a VISTA volunteer around 2009, and in the story she recounts her own experiences living in the area and how it changed her.

“In many ways, the investigation of these crimes was the larger trauma to the community than the deaths themselves. That there was a lot of harm done to Pocahontas County because these women happened to die in this place, and I hope that people feel in some way relieved of some guilt,” she said. “I think it’s important for folks to know that I have a genuine love for that place.”

The book received good reviews from literary critics across the country, but some people in Pocahontas County have not responded well to it.

That’s why we asked one of West Virginia’s literary experts to give his take on the book.

Doug Van Gundy, a writer, associate professor of English, and the director of West Virginia Wesleyan College’s Master of Fine Arts program, in Buckhannon, West Virginia, has a personal tie to Pocahontas County himself. Van Gundy lived there when the case of the Rainbow Girls murder went to trial in the 1990s. He worked as a program director at a local community radio station at the time. In his review for “Inside Appalachia,” Van Gundy expressed mixed feelings about the book and found it was more of a memoir about Eisenberg than the true crime story the title suggests.

“Despite the subject and the setting, this is not, at its heart, a book about West Virginia, or Pocahontas County, or the difference between truth and perception, or even the murders of Vicki Durian and Nancy Santomero. It is about Emma Copley Eisenberg, and her occasionally painful, often self-destructive quest to understand herself,” Van Gundy said.

In Her Words

In an interview with associate producer Eric Douglas, Eisenberg said when she first started writing the book, she didn’t include her personal experiences in it, but she eventually changed her mind.

“I felt it was important to acknowledge where I was from and what my position in encountering the community in Pocahontas County was,” she said. “I hope the book will speak to readers both inside the county and elsewhere. But I want to make sure that readers elsewhere also understand that Pocahontas County is a contemporary place that’s living and breathing. That is not something of the past.”

Writing a book about an event that was so emotional for the local community was difficult for Eisenberg, and she felt she needed to share her own experiences to make the story complete. She said this was the most truthful book she could write.

On the other hand, she never intended her book to be a “definitive history of the crimes.” She said she knows there are other research projects going on and she welcomes them, even if they end up conflicting with her book.

Eisenberg did a lot of research into the convoluted investigation, including

interviewing Jacob Beard. Eisenberg traveled to Florida, long after he was released from jail. She recounts it was a tough conversation.

As to the negative reactions from some people in the community? She said she hopes their anger spurs conversations about the issues she raised in the book.

“I didn’t want to write a true crime book that is a page turner about who killed the Rainbow Girls,” she said. “That isn’t my intent and never was. What I wanted to write was a book that explored what these crimes mean.”

New Book Tells Inside Story Of Beginnings Of Opioid Crisis

Former Charleston Gazette-Mail reporter Eric Eyre won a Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for his investigation into how drug distributors pumped powerful opioids into some of West Virginia’s most rural counties. In his new book, Eyre takes readers on a journey through the reporting it took to uncover the story, beginning with a single death in one family and detailing how those distributors ignored how addictive the drugs could be.

“Death In Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic” chronicles Eyre’s years-long probe, which began when he was covering the West Virginia statehouse beat, including newly elected West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.

“We got a tip that his (Morrisey’s) wife worked for one of these distributors that distributes opioids and other drugs, called Cardinal Health,” Eyre said in an interview “And then we found out that Cardinal Health had donated to Patrick Morrissey’s inaugural party. And it kind of just snowballed from there.”

The story wasn’t an easy one to cover. There were legal fights and efforts by the pharmaceutical industry, the manufacturers and even the Drug Enforcement Agency to conceal records. Morrisey also launched an investigation into the Charleston Gazette-Mail, in what Eyre believes was an attempt to quash the investigation.

“That really took our owners and management back. They were concerned about this aggressive reporting,” Eyre said. Ultimately, the publisher and executive editor at the paper told Eyre to keep at it. “And we won in the end.”

In honoring him the 2017 award for investigative reporting, the Pulitzer Board praised Eyre’s “courageous reporting, performed in the face of powerful opposition, to expose the flood of opioids flowing into depressed West Virginia counties with the highest overdose death rates in the country.”

One guiding principle for Eyre was the idea of “sustained outrage,” a term coined by Former Charleston Gazette publisher Ned Chilton: Newspapers shouldn’t write about an injustice once and then move on, but report story after story on the topic until something changes.

In today’s news climate, with newspapers closing their doors and laying off reporters, Eyre worries that it may be difficult to continue that tradition.

“We laid off upwards of three people the week before last and then another two the previous month and more cuts are coming. This is not just the Gazette-Mail. This is happening all over the country,” he said.

Eyre resigned from the Gazette-Mail on March 31, the day his book was released. He said he wants to focus on his health. In the book he revealed that he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2016.

With the coronavirus dominating headlines around the world, Eyre is concerned that the opioid crisis might recede into people’s minds. He noted that many of those same pharmaceutical distributors are using the coronavirus pandemic to “to duck and dodge responsibility for the opioid crisis.

Eyre said he hopes those recovering from substance use disorders don’t experience a setback while the country follows stay-at-home orders.

“A lot of these people who are in recovery, they really, really look forward to group therapy where they have 12 to 15 people. They say that the best part of the whole process is getting together with groups of people. I guess maybe they can do it on Zoom or something or telemedicine, but I don’t think it’s the same,” Eyre said.

He also noted that in more rural parts of the state, and the region, large percentages of people do not have access to reliable high-speed internet and may not be able to join in those online sessions.

“They say the opposite of addiction is connection and we’re not getting much connection now,” Eyre said.

This story is part of an occasional series featuring authors from, or writing about, Appalachia.

'Growing Up Black In Appalachia': How One Storyteller Is Changing The Narrative

W.I. “Bill” Hairston is a professional storyteller. He spins tales about a number of different topics — some made up and some real.

During a recent talk at the West Virginia State University Economic Development Center on Charleston’s West Side he devoted his entire presentation to the topic “Growing Up Black in Appalachia.”

Hairston was originally born in Phenix City, Alabama in 1949. He describes the area of the town where he lived as being predominantly black.

“My dentist was black. My teachers were black. The lawyers were black. The pharmacists were black — everybody was black,” he said. “White folks sort of showed up here and there, and they were in town, but they were in another part of town for one thing. And other than the mailman and the potato chip guy that came to the store and the store owner, we really didn’t see a lot of white folks on a regular basis.”

That all changed for Hairston when his father announced he was retiring from the military and they were moving to join Hairston’s grandfather in the predominantly white town of St. Albans, West Virginia. Hairston said his family was the only one of color in the area.

As kids do, Hairston and his younger sister spent that first summer in West Virginia playing with the neighborhood kids. As summer came to an end, it was time for Hairston and his sister to go to school, and unbeknownst to them West Virginia’s schools were desegregated.

“We noticed that the little white kids that we played with all summer long were walking with us and we sort of said to ourselves, “Well, maybe, maybe they use the same bus stop.” And we got on the bus and right behind us came these white kids. We said, “Well, maybe they use the same bus,”” Hairston said.

Sixty years later Hairston considers himself a West Virginian, and although he said he has faced racism, it is because of those difficult experiences that he became a storyteller. He added that growing up storytelling was a form of entertainment.

“It goes all the way back to St. Albans. People would just sort of sit on their porch and share all kinds of stories,” he said.

For his last two years of high school, Hairston moved to Charleston’s West Side.

“There was a place right over here. There was a VFW club with a big ol’ oak tree outside. On Saturday night, the men would gather there,” he said. “As a kid you couldn’t say anything, but they would pass the bottle and tell each other some of the biggest stories in the world.”

However, not all of his stories are as fond of memories. In his talk, Hairston told a story about lifeguards that did not want to desegregate a pool in 1960s Charleston. They sprayed Hairston and his friends with water hoses to forcibly remove them.

But he also told a story about encountering a more subtle form of discrimination at an event more recently. Some things were said that had implied racial bias. That evening, he used a story from the main stage to point out what had happened and why it needed to change.

Hairston said he uses stories, often laced with humor, to help people understand the issues, especially when it comes to race, that surround us.

“I realized that in West Virginia — as much as I love it, and I love it to death — there are issues that we don’t deal with. There’s some things that we need to work on always,” Hairston said. “I hope this message keeps conversation alive, keeps people talking, making people aware so that when they hear something among their friends or their fathers or their uncles or whatever, they at least challenge it a little bit. I think we all become better.”

Hairston travels the region telling stories about his childhood that, he hopes, give his listeners a better understanding about what it means to grow up ‘Black in Appalachia.’