What the Mountains Remember is a gripping story of one woman’s journey to find herself in the place in between her past and her future. When her father died, her mother made the desperate decision to turn her back on everything they had known in an effort to survive. As a result they moved from the mountains of West Virginia to Gas City, Indiana, and began moving in the circles of the Edisons, Fords and other wealthy inventors. This is a far departure from the life she had growing up in the mining communities of West Virginia.

Now she’s caught between her past and future as she writes about the creation of the Grove Park Inn. She’s swept into the details and the reality of each person’s story and contribution to the great endeavor. And by her side is the man she’s to marry, but she’s determined to not give her heart to. You can imagine the tug and pull that results in the sweet wooing of two indiviudals who for different reasons are committed to a marriage of convenience but quickly begin to wonder if that’s possible.

What the Mountains Remember is a romance to the mountains and people of the Blue Ridge and of the 1910s. It highlights the separation of class yet the reality that we are all equal and have value. Through Belle’s eyes we can see the value of each person. There’s even a hint of Beauty and the Beast in the story, though I may be the only one who senses that theme. It’s a story I’ve enjoyed and can recommend to lover’s of Sarah Loudin Thomas, Pepper Basham, and Laura Frantz.  I give it four stars.

WHAT THE MOUNTAINS REMEMBER

 At this wondrous resort, secrets can easily be hidden in plain sight when the eye is trained on beauty.

April 1913—Belle Newbold hasn’t seen mountains for seven years—since her father died in a mining accident and her mother married gasoline magnate, Shipley Newbold. But when her stepfather’s business acquaintance, Henry Ford, invites the family on one of his famous Vagabonds camping tours, she is forced to face the hills once again—primarily in order to reunite with her future fiancé, owner of the land the Vagabonds are using for their campsite, a man she’s only met once before. It is a veritable arranged marriage, but she prefers it that way. Belle isn’t interested in love. She only wants a simple life—a family of her own and the stability of a wealthy man’s pockets. That’s what Worth Delafield has promised to give her and it’s worth facing the mountains again, the reminder of the past, and her poverty, to secure her future.

But when the Vagabonds group is invited to tour the unfinished Grove Park Inn and Belle is unexpectedly thrust into a role researching and writing about the building of the inn—a construction the locals are calling The Eighth Wonder of the World—she quickly realizes that these mountains are no different from the ones she once called home. As Belle peels back the facade of Grove Park Inn, of Worth, of the society she’s come to claim as her own, and the truth of her heart, she begins to see that perhaps her part in Grove Park’s story isn’t a coincidence after all. Perhaps it is only by watching a wonder rise from ordinary hands and mountain stone that she can finally find the strength to piece together the long-destroyed path toward who she was meant to be.

International bestselling author Joy Callaway returns with a story of the ordinary people behind extraordinary beauty—and the question of who gets to tell their stories.

AUTHOR BIO

Joy Callaway is the author of All the Pretty Places, The Grand Design, The Fifth Avenue Artists Society, and Secret Sisters. She holds a BA in journalism and public relations from Marshall University and an MMC from the University of South Carolina. She resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband, John, and her children, Alevia and John. Visit her online at joycallaway.com.