HMN Stephanie Gardner brings to life 19th century survival in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia in her new book.

I’m happy to share that I completed and soon will self-publish a short historical fiction book, “Rattlesnake Granny: Nancy Remembers Life in Old Thornton Gap, Inspired by True Stories.”  Writing a book about the people and environment of the Appalachian Mountains has been a longtime dream, and it was fun to create a narrative inspired by life in what is now Shenandoah National Park.  The book is about how earlier people of the Shenandoah Valley navigated their landscape, their relationships with each other, and their changing ways of life.

Developing the story of a mountaineer woman named Nancy Pullum, an actual person who lived in the 1800s and made her living catching rattlesnakes and selling their oil, took hours of research.  Other characters include a freedman named John, also based on a real person, and the historic Virginia sculptor, William Randolph Barbee. There are also some autobiographical memories incorporated in the fictional story: they come from my experiences with family members who practiced lifeways and speech patterns of the historic Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and North Carolina.

Writing about folklore of this area was one of my favorite parts of the book.  Writing about the American Civil War in the Shenandoah Valley was an interesting challenge. I hope that Virginia Master Naturalists especially will enjoy the non-human characters in this short book.  Bears, birds, panthers, and other wild varmints make appearances.  There are also some domestic animals, and of course, a rattlesnake.

Telling the stories of these historic people in an engaging but non-sensational and non-stereotypical way has been great fun.  I hope that the book can help to correct some of the long-believed stereotypes that painted Blue Ridge mountaineers as primitive, racially homogenous, and cut off from the greater civilization.

– Stephanie Gardner, Transfer member, VMN since 2012, January 2024