First published 2001
Jeremy Cobb shoulders his pack and steps onto the Appalachian Trail. The city-bred graduate student plans to follow the path Katie Wyler took in her desperate flight home. Two centuries earlier, eighteen-year-old Katie escaped Shawnee captivity after watching her pioneer family die in Mitchell County, North Carolina. She fled from an Ohio village and traced the rivers through wilderness back toward home. Her brave trek ended in tragedy. Jeremy has no trail experience, but he pushes forward with his scholarly mission. He doesn't know that Katie's spirit still roams these mountains, seeking the home she never reached. Mountain wise woman Nora Bonesteel spots her each autumn when the light slants low. Meanwhile, escaped convict Hiram Sorley wanders the same wilderness. The elderly man suffers from Korsakoff's syndrome and lives trapped in 1967, remembering nothing of recent years or the crime that imprisoned him. Local law enforcement hunts him halfheartedly. Sheriff Spencer Arrowood pities the confused old moonshiner who killed a despised bureaucrat. Deputy candidate Martha Ayers sees Harm's capture as her ticket to promotion. Three lost souls converge on trails where past and present blur together.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, 21st-century, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: past-and-present, three-lost-souls
Setting: Appalachian Trail, Mitchell County, North Carolina, Ohio
Period: 18th Century, 20th Century
448 pages · Library Binding · Bt Bound