DOING THE “AT”
It is rare that we come across a novel in which a precise setting plays such an overpowering role.
In the eastern United States we have a thousand miles of mountain trail running from Georgia to Maine called ”The Appalachian Trail”- spoken of with respect and appreciation as “AT” by those who live and love the type of outdoor living the trail encourages. It is one of the created wonders of this homeland of ours large unknown and unappreciated by the bulk of the population.
One does not,normally, associate crime with such an area but the novelist Jess Carr, who grew up in the Southwest Virginia area of the trail wrote an historical novel in l985 about a double murder of two hikers on the famed trail. It is a book which will endure for many years for several reasons. This is,I think, one of the few novels I have read which do a convincing job of analyzing what the long range influences of our sixties ideas concerning morality and social conduct have taken in our culture.
The very concept of the Appalachian Trail remains unique in so many ways as people discover it for the first time. The sheer grandeur and immensity of the trail through the backbone of the ancient, worn-down mountain range is something you will find is difficult to ignore.
Novelist Jess Carr uses a real-life murder which took place in the area and invents a memorable host of mountain people, visitors, government officials, families and relatives which is most convincing.
I read an older, library copy of the novel and I noted there were an exceptionally large number of dog-eared pages as one neared the middle of the book. That was, to me, was indicative of the fact that much of the first part of the novel gets to be tedious reading for anyone other than experienced hikers and trail devotees. I felt there was too much detail of segments of the trail which did not strike me as being different from others. The evidence of many dog-eared corners indicated a great many readers had difficulty doing more than a few pages at a time. Once the murders are committed the action takes over and move along rapidly. I found no more book-marks.
I am not the person to write a straight “review”of this book because I,personally, knew a score or more of the actual people who actively cause the tragic story to move and live.
It all a bit too close to me to see it distinctly without associating other known aspects of those people's lives. I still know some of them. The owner and trainer of the dogs used it the search efforts lives nearby and works as nurse nearby,having “retired” from her “Search and Rescue” team work.
“Murder On The Appalachian Trail”, by Jess Carr, was published in 1985 by the Commonwealth Press, Inc. Radford, Virginia and may not have had as wide a distribution as it might have received with a larger, nation-wide firm, but it is out there and it is available. Get a copy. Read it.
You will gain a new appreciation for the “AT”.
A.L.M. August 20, 2004 [c537wds]
