The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

I'm vacationing in a rustic cottage on a lake in Maine with my family. One quiet evening, the moon rising, and loons calling, I find this old book, its spotted and yellowed pages almost falling out and begin to read it. Well! I couldn't put it down. Maybe the setting and circumstance is why I've given this book a 5, but it is truly is a great story. Along the Kentucky/Virginia border 'civilization' is arriving. The mountain people have their own culture and rules of clan justice and they are about to discover the culture of the so-called civilized world. This is an absolutely fascinating view of tribal tradition clashing with the rule of law and proper living as the civilized world sees it. A young girl who has only known rude mountain life and morays meets and falls in love with an engineer from 'away' who is cultured, educated, well dressed, well spoken. Meanwhile, coal has been discovered in the Cove. Speculators from as far away as England come to cash in. Schools and stores and jails are built in the Gap. However, the once pure streams run black. All the while reading this, I thought of the parallel of today thinking that our culture, come hell or high water, is best for all. I wonder: to what end?

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is set in the Kentucky mountains of the 19th century. June Tolliver is a very poor young mountain girl who meets an engineer from the outside world. He takes June out of the mountains so she can go to school and get an education. He is also interested in mining coal in the Kentucky hills. The story of how their love for each other grows and of the Tolliver family's feud with the Falin's is a classic American tale. I read this story out loud to my teen-age children and they just loved it! This is the first of a trilogy by Fox.

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine proves to be an enchanting tale about love. A tall pine tree stood in solitary splendor on the top of a mountain in Kentucky and through its fame lured a young engineer to find it and leaad Hale on a trail of love which I felt was an overall wonderful plot for this book. Since the plot of the book was set in Kentucky June and her family along with the many nountaineers had our good ole country accent which also portrayed that they had not received very much education. In a waaay I feel that it was an insult to Kentuckians knoweledge even though it did portray June's remarkable learning rate when Hale helped her to attend school. I think the beauty of the state could have been captured morewhile telling of how beautiful the land was while looking at the view of the lonsome pine. Many flowers in Kentucky are mentioned throughout the novel and June also had a flower garden built for her of Kentucky's wildflowers. Although I didn't like the waay the law stepped in during the Falins and Tollivers family feuds which continued throughout June's childhoodBecause I think their battles could have been a book by itself rather than to combine them with the love and romance of Hale and June even though they greatly affected their lives. I felt that the novel was deeply expressive in many ways and throughout all encounters portrayed by John Fox Jr. you were sure to experience the poetic side of life in the Kentucky mountains.

Bob feels that this book was very good. Bob liked this book very much. This gripping tale of love and survival is deeply etched into the soul of every reader that reads this heart-wrenching novel. Fox tells a story of a facinating undying love for others and the Big Pine that always seems to know the answers to life's most difficult questions. Bob encourages anyone that likes a wonderful well wrote book to pick this one up, hold it close to your heart, and never let go.

The Page Turners Book Club of Greensburg Kentucky selected this book by John Fox, Jr. as its June 1999 selection. The club rated it a 7 on our scale of 1-10. We felt this Kentucky author captured the spirit and essence of pre-coal mining life in the Eastern Kentucky mountains. This love story unfolds against the devastating changes which occurred when the coal companies came and ravaged the mountains and exploited the local people. Fox weaves the story of an enterprising "furriner" and a local mountain girl against the background of a beaconing lonesome pine tree which provides shelter, solace, and hope from the first page to the last. In language lyrical and poetic, he describes the beauty of the mountains and the promise of love delayed. While accomplishing this he doesn't shirk from descriptions of the rigors and harshness of mountain life and the terror of an unseen enemy. John Fox, Jr. was the first author in the U.S. to write a book which sold a million copies, "The Little Sheperd of Kingdom Come" also set in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky.