Zach. 1987.

An excerpt from the unpublished novel, Watauga, has been published in the online music journal, Jerry Jazz Musician.

Set in Watauga County, North Carolina during the years 1977 to 2007, the novel consists of a dozen chapters – some rather brief – focused on as many different characters. These chapters are formally diverse, ranging from dramatic dialogues (in the style of a radio play) to first-, second- and third-person narratives as well as hybrid forms. Taken together, they function as a constellation of separate stories that point, in their different ways, beyond the narrative itself toward certain moments in the racial history of the place. One of these moments – the primordial trauma, so to speak – is the lynching, in September, 1932, of Ralph and Norwood Horton, two young black men from the Junaluska Community in Boone, North Carolina, the county seat. This historical event haunts the fictional action, which centers on the alleged rape, in 1987, of a young white high school student by one of her black classmates. While this later tragedy has consequences for the entire community, both black and white, it touches different lives differently. Moving forward and backward through time, and shifting from one character’s point-of-view to another’s, the novel thus offers a kaleidoscopic and in many respects contradictory portrait of a small American town in Southern Appalachia struggling to come to terms with its multi-generational history of racial violence.