Daughters of Green Mountain Gap was written by Teri M Brown and published by Atmosphere Press in 2024. You can purchase it on Amazon/Kindle and you can visit the author on Amazon and on social media.
Teri Brown's characters come alive on the page, imploring us to care about them; and I do, so much so that it's hard to leave them.
The late 1800s were a difficult time to survive in America. The wilderness was home to many and those who were fortunate to find themselves living in a small town or city still had to contend with a life of adversity and an abundant amount of uncertainty that surrounded them. Healthcare, for many, topped the list of what was needed to survive in a world of diseases like smallpox, measles, yellow fever or more commonly contracted illnesses like the flu, which ended up killing thousands. These illnesses could wipe out an entire village or town in a matter of days.
Maggie McCoury, a generational healer woman, known as a granny woman, learned much of what she knows about the healing power of roots and herbs from a local Cherokee tribe, and she applies her knowledge to help her loved ones and the people who live around her. Her daughter Carrie Ann, on the other hand, disagrees strongly with her mother and becomes a nurse and promotes the use of medicines for which her university training has taught her. Carrie Ann's animosity toward her mother grows as she teams up with a doctor in town, in an attempt to bring sanity back to the community who didn't have much of a choice than to believe in the powers of "mountain magic".
Carrie Ann's daughter, Josie Mae, must now find a way to navigate through the arguments that her mother and grandmother have and to forge her own future in the healing profession. Loving her mother and grandmother equally, she strives to learn from them both, but she doesn't know whether she wants to become a granny woman or a nurse. What will happen to these three women?
Daughters of Green Mountain Gap touches on the family dynamics of three generations of women living in North Carolina at the turn of the century but it also gives us a look at racism, fear of change, and the loss of traditions during a time when our country was growing amidst all of that adversity.
Teri Brown is a master at her craft of telling a compelling and gripping story. Her characters come alive on the page, imploring us to care about them; and I do, so much so that it's hard to leave them. This story teaches as well as entertains. We learn what it must have been like at another time in our history when people had to rely on traditions and surrounding nature to heal a loved one and we learn that despite all of their efforts, even with the use of medicines, people still suffered and died.
Teri M Brown has found her niche, her third novel is another keeper, on the bookshelf with the rest. I loved Daughters of Green Mountain Gap.
I give Daughters of Green Mountain Gap 4 out of 5 stars.