The Road (Appalachian Echoes Fiction)

John Ehle is seen as a "regional writer", which is a shame since I think he deserves a wider audience.The Road is basically a novel based about the building of a railroad across the appalachian mountains shortly after the civil war. It is very well researched; so its accurate to NC history, and if you have been to the Asheville NC area you might recognize some of the landmarks. But Ehle makes his characters realistic so that you come to care about them, so it is a novel more than just historical. This is really about people dealing with very hard country in the frontier, and Ehle lets us in on what the people might have been like and why they were motivated to endure so much in order to expand the frontier.Ehle has written a series of books about this region, the Landbreakers is the first and the Road is second. Each book stands on its own so its not necessary to enjoy these sequentially.