Appalachian Heart: Oral Histories of the Mountain Elders (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780615774541)

As a young girl growing up along the gold coast of Florida, Lynn always had a Waldenish bent toward the old ways and longed to live a simplistic lifestyle in the mountains, far from the flatlands of her home state. Her dream came true in 1980 when she moved to the tiny hamlet of Love, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Realizing the elderly neighbors living around her and their unique culture was slowly ebbing away, Lynn thought there must be a way to capture the existing Appalachian lifestyle before it disappeared altogether. With no prior experience in journalism, she began publishing a monthly newspaper called Backroads that chronicled the customs and activities of the native mountain people she had grown to love; the people who mentored her and taught her their ways. Backroads carved out a folksy niche, having a twenty-five year run before Lynn retired in 2006. But the mountain people's pleas, "Don't let our stories die with your retirement", compelled Lynn to start writing five books about the vanishing and oft-misunderstood people of her area. Lynn's fourth book in the Backroads series, entitled Appalachian Heart, records the oral histories of nineteen native people still living in the vicinity of Love where the author makes her home. All five books may be viewed on Lynn's web-site at www.backroadsbooks.com. Lynn is happily married to Billy Coffey, a rugged native of Love, Virginia, who is also a Baptist minister and they continue to live the simple life on their mountaintop farm. They have five children, six grandchildren and are expecting their first great-grandchild in December of 2015.