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. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine proves to be an enchanting tale about love. 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. However, the once pure streams run black. Schools and stores and jails are built in the Gap. Speculators from as far away as England come to cash in. Meanwhile, coal has been discovered in the Cove. 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. This is an absolutely fascinating view of tribal tradition clashing with the rule of law and proper living as the civilized world sees it. 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. Along the Kentucky/Virginia border 'civilization' is arriving. Maybe the setting and circumstance is why I've given this book a 5, but it is truly is a great story. 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. If that's something which interests you, this is definitely worthwhile.I'm vacationing in a rustic cottage on a lake in Maine with my family. Still, the book deserves its status as a classic of American regionalism. The middle portion of the book, which follows her progression from 'barefoot hick' to 'cultured society girl' to 'barefoot hick who is now too educated to be happy with her family anymore', gets a bit dull. The love story really isn't all that interesting even the author of this edition's foreword (John Ed Pearce) admits that the hero, Hale, is 'impossibly brave and pure', and that his love interest 'is only slightly more believable'. The author, himself a coal and real estate speculator in the region, knew the details of these changes, and the people of the area, intimately many of the characters, and the feud in the novel, are likely based on real people he knew.While the author mixes these 3 elements fairly skillfully, it's really aspect #3- the opportunity of having an inside look at a legendary but vanished hillbilly culture, and a ringside seat for a time of historic change- which provides the primary reason for reading this novel today. Partly because of his interest in June Tolliver, and partly because of his efforts to bring law and order to the region, Jack Hale gets caught in the middle of the feud, antagonizing both sides.3) The story of how the coming of the railroads, and the coal and iron industry, brought rapid changes to a region and a culture which had been largely isolated for a century. Along the way the two fall in love.2) The story of two feuding clans, the Tollivers and Falins. A young engineer, Jack Hale, while scouting the mountains of the Cumberland Plateau, takes an interest in a girl (June Tolliver) from a backwoods mountain family he gets permission from her father to pay for her education, farther and farther afield, eventually sending her all the way to New York. (And the book does have some plot elements in common with westerns, too namely, the struggle to impose the rule of law in a lawless, violent place.)The book interweaves 3 elements:1) A Pygmalion-style love story. Maybe it's just that the title sounds like the title of a Western. A young engineer, Jack Hale, while scouting the mountains of the It's interesting how many people use the term 'Western' to describe this novel set around the Virginia/Kentucky border at the turn of the 20th century.
'Modernist Shepherdess: Gertrude Stein's Pastoral Sounds'. Film Clowns of the Depression: Twelve Defining Comic Performances. 'Two movie clowns who sang about 'The Blue Ridge Mountains Of Virginia'!'. ^ 'Manuel Romain – The Trail Of Lonesome Pine'.^ MacDonald, 'The Trail of the Lonesome Pine' (Sheet music).
The song was the favorite song of Gertrude Stein.