Review, Author Spotlight and Giveaway: ‘Along A Storied Trail’ by Ann H. Gabhart

Kentucky packhorse librarian Tansy Calhoun doesn’t mind the rough trails and long hours as she serves her Appalachian mountain community during the Great Depression. Yet she longs to find love like the heroines in her books. When a charming writer comes to town, she thinks she might have found it–or is the perfect man actually closer than she thinks?

Perdita Sweet has called these mountains home for so long she’s nearly as rocky as the soil around her small cabin. Long ago she thought she could love, but when the object of her affection up and married someone else, she stopped giving too much of herself away to others.

As is so often the case, it’s easier to see what’s best for others than to see what’s best for oneself, and Perdita knows who Tansy should choose. But why would anyone listen to the romantic advice of an old spinster?

Saddle up for a heartfelt story of love–love of family, love of place, and the love of a lifetime–from bestselling author Ann H. Gabhart.

‘The way the Lord can bring blessings at hard times can confound a body for certain.’

The time is the Great Depression, the setting is Appalachia, and the story is full and rich. Tansy Calhoun is a WPA packhorse librarian (this was a real program) and she thoroughly enjoys bringing the richness of books to those up in the hills and other areas of her county. Folks that are barely surviving at times and they sure do love these books Tansy brings every few weeks. Tansy doesn’t just drop books off; she visits and reads to them, listens to their problems and prays for them. She discovers that everyone has a story to tell, some painful and hard to hear. But she presses on.

I find it amazing that these women were willing to endure so much to bring books to folks in this remote area of Kentucky in such hard times. Being a book lover, this story is particularly interesting to me. I would have loved seeing a book woman ride up on a horse, bringing me a new book to read.

‘Sometimes Tansy thought every prayer she’d ever thought to pray and some she hadn’t thought up had been answered the day she got one of the book routes here in Owsley County.’

Ann Gabhart opens the door up to these people and their lives in Appalachia and we are able to feel what they feel and also experience their hurts. All because of her gift at story telling. She makes them come alive.

Told in her signature style, Gabhart’s cadence rolls sweetly along throughout the book. I found myself invested in their lives as I let myself be carried away with the flow. Such wonderful characters and powerful emotions they had! I was captivated! I can highly recommend this one. And, in my opinion, it’d make a most excellent movie. Well done!

My thanks to Revell Publishing for a copy of this book via Net Galley. I was not expected to leave a positive review. The opinion here is entirely my own.

A Country Girl with a Big Dream by Ann H. Gabhart

Hi, everybody. Susan invited me over to visit, but she said she didn’t want the usual song and dance about writing this or that book, although I do have to mention Along a Storied Trail that had its book birthday on June 1. If you like storytelling, you just might like riding along with my packhorse librarian as she takes books up into the hills.

Okay, that was my book pitch. Now I’m going to tell you a story about a little country girl with a big dream.

I grew up in a white clapboard house built around two log rooms. I was born in one of those rooms more than a few years ago. My father was a farmer and my mother a farmwife. Dad raised corn and tobacco and had beef cows. Mama raised chickens, a garden and three girls. We butchered our own meat. Well, I didn’t. Dad did although I did get in on stirring the lard in the big black kettle over a fire and enjoyed eating cracklings. Mom canned our vegetables and fruits and made jam out of the wild blackberries we picked. Oh, and we sometime had a strawberry patch. My favorite. Nothing better than a strawberry with the kiss of the sun still warming it.

Dad had sheep too and sometimes when one of the ewes had twins she would decide two was one too many. So we would raise the rejected baby on a bottle. Loved those little curly lambs. We never lacked for cats and kittens around the farm to pet. Then, when I was eight or so, I got the dog hunger and one of dad’s friends brought me a pup. I was a happy kid. I don’t think I’ve been without a dog since except after my dear Oscar died of bone cancer in 2017. A couple of dog lonely months went by before I found my wild and wooly Frankie at a humane shelter. A year later, a church friend needed a home for her dog, Marley, and we added him to the family.

Back to the pleasures of growing up on a farm. We had to help with the picking and weeding and whatever else needed doing on the farm, but I also had plenty of time for fun and walking in the woods and reading. I loved to read. Still do. But that loving to read back when I was a kid gave me the wild idea to write a book myself. I wanted to be a Hardy girl (like those Hardy boys) and solve a mystery. No actual mysteries out on our farm, so I wrote my own story in a wire bound notebook. I’ve been writing ever since.

When I started noticing boys, the Lord must have been watching out for me and helped me meet the right guy at the young age of fourteen.  I was a teenage bride, and by the time I was nineteen, I was mom of two babies. That will grow a girl up fast. But I never lost my dream to write stories. Between changing diapers and washing those diapers (everybody washed diapers back then) I somehow found time to keep writing. I had some pieces published in church magazines to encourage me. Then, I wrote a novel and never looked back. I loved bringing characters to life that I could live with for months while they shared their stories with me.

Success didn’t come overnight. We bought a farm and built a house. We had another baby. I helped my husband on the farm. He took a job off the farm but money was still tight. We had a huge garden and I filled shelves with canned vegetables and froze some fruits and vegetables too. I wrote my first book while Captain Kangaroo entertained my youngest son and the older two were in school. That book didn’t sell. Nor did the second book I wrote, but the third book, a historical romance, found a home at Warner Books.

I’d like to say it was all smooth sailing after that, but no. I’ve had some rocky valley times with my writing when I couldn’t find any loving editors for the stories I wrote. Along the way, I did some temporary secretarial work to help pay the bills, but after a while, I’d quit so I could have more time for writing.

Fortunately for me, Christian fiction was gaining an audience. Also fortunately for me, the Lord put a story in my heart about a young teen and her preacher father. That book, Scent of Lilacs, did find a loving editor and I’ve been blessed to have published over twenty books in the Christian market. I love including the faith journeys of my characters in my stories. I also like setting those books in Kentucky and finding ways to include my love of nature and sometimes dogs (or cats in my Hidden Springs mysteries) in my stories. 

My husband and I have been members of a little country church for over fifty years. We still live out here on the farm where I like to go walking with my dogs and now and again, some of my nine grandkids. I am blessed to have a beautiful wilderness area that has a creek that springs up out of the ground at the base or a tall cliff. The clear creek ripple over rocks down a narrow valley. Beside the creek and on the hillsides, wildflowers abound.

I’m thankful for my phone camera that lets me snap pictures to my heart’s content without the first worry about the cost of film. I enjoy sharing my pictures of flowers, the creek, and my dogs. I’ve also been known to take a grandkid picture now and again. I like to post my pictures on my Facebook author’s page, Instagram and on my blog to liven up the posts. Sometimes that picture might be a beautiful wildflower. Other times it could be dew on a spider web or frost on a dandelion puff.  But I think my cow and snake pictures can get the most response.

Frankie and Marley keep me moving by demanding we go walking every day. Frankie has a clock in his dog head and when it’s our usual walking time, he comes in my office and pushes his ninety pound body between me and the keyboard. He doesn’t crawl all the way up in my lap. He’s too big for that, but half of him is heavy enough. He has a way of convincing me that a walk will give me time to think up some new plot points. Marley is much more patient, but where Frankie is, he wants to be too.

My husband is retired from farming now, and we lease the farm to a young man who has a herd of cattle. That lets me enjoy seeing the new calves in the spring, and the dogs get to bark at the cows that give them a look that says “not them again.” We gave over most of the garden spot to our son who has a growing family, but we do keep a few rows for ourselves. I don’t put up (can or freeze) as much as I used to. I can green beans, make a little blackberry jam, freeze some tomatoes and zucchini while enjoying fresh produce out of the garden during the summer. 

I’m still a country girl who sometimes can’t believe my big dream to write books came true. But I am so very glad it did. I smile every time someone says they’ve read one of my stories. I’m happy when reader friends say they enjoy my newsletter or that they like digitally sharing my Sunday morning walks on Facebook or hearing about what Frankie and Marley are up to.

Sometimes the Lord gives a person the desires of her heart.  I’m blessed to be one of those people.

Thank you, Susan, for inviting me over and letting me chat about that little girl with a big dream.