The first panelists is doctor thomas burton, Professor Emeritus at east tennessee university, he produced 3 documentaries on serpent handling and is the author of serpent handling believers, the serpent and the spirit, and Beach Mountain man, the memoirs of rhonda lee hicks. His most recent book, voices were soliciting, three women of appalachia is out for Mercury University press. Please join me in welcoming doctor thomas burton. The next person that i would like to introduce is sarah smarsh, a kansasbased journalist who has reported for the new york times, the guardian and many other publications. Her first book heartland, a memoir of working hard and being broke in the richest country on earth which is a very relatable title, was a finalist for the National Book award, 2018 Research Fellow at Harvard University on media politics and public policy, sarah smarsh is a frequent commentator on economic inequality. The most recent book she come i it natural, dolly parton and the women who lived their songs is out now from simon and schuster. The last person i would like to introduce is Wayne Winkler, a descendent of someone from tennessee, past president of the london heritage association. Lives in johnson to tennessee. Beyond the sunset, 19691976. Please join me in welcoming our panelists. We will hear from doctor burton. Thank you very much. It is a pleasure for me to be part of the festival this year and the opportunity to introduce you to this book, voices worth listening three women of appalachia published by the university of tennessee press. This book as the title suggests is the presentation of the lives of three women of appalachia two a white woman, one black. One important feature of this book is that the lives are told by the women themselves in their own voices. Multiple interviews i personally made with them. These interviews are blended and crafted from their freespeech to form unified and progressive monologues. The monologues, however, attempt to retain the integrity of each persons speech and voice, also to recreate the experience of personally talking and listening to these people. Certain details are altered in accordance with their wishes so that they remain anonymous. In a way these women are presented like characters in a play, characters who speak directly to their audience in their own language without interruption and without detailed analytical interpretation. Analytical scholarly interpretation of people or regions can be insightful yet on the other hand they can overstate a single critical perception or restrict at best a perspectives. A literary case in point is a statement by the actor and director sir Laurence Olivier at the beginning of his film hamlet. Olivier says this is the tragedy of a man who cannot make up his mind. The statement does provide dramatic focus for the film, but it is nevertheless a very restrictive commentary of one of the worlds most complex plays. Hamlet is, of course, a great deal more than a man who cannot make up his mind. The same point of overemphasis and restriction is relative to critical analyses of appalachians and appalachia. However. To repeat, this book, instead of being a critical analysis is a presentation of the voices of the women themselves. You, the readers, have the opportunity to respond to them in your own emotional and intellectual insights. As the title suggests the voices of these women worth the listening. Furthermore their voices are worth listening through several reasons. If for no other reason they are worth listening to because they are the voices of really interesting, very complex human beings whose lives have been lived off the beaten path. There are people you dont meet every day or if you did meet them you couldnt guess the roads they have traveled. For me personally when i heard the stories of the lives of these three women i was really blown away. I could hardly believe what i was hearing but they were true nevertheless. They were forthright. Deeply personal revelations of real people, real human beings struggling with amazing endurance against tremendous odds. Some of those odds are of their own making. Some of them, however are odds over which they had little or no control but unfortunately then in the language of shakespeare, when sorrows come, they come not single but in battalions. Let me list for you just some of the sea of troubles they collectively confront. For example, various criminal circumstances which include homicide, assault and battery, theft, rape, attempted murder, drug addiction and imprisonment. Domestic problems, parental dysfunction, childhood pregnancies, loss of child custody and multiple dysfunctional intimate relationships including physical and mental spousal abuse, social problems, childhood bullying and Racial Discrimination and gender discrimination, economic instability, starting with poverty orienting in poverty. Homelessness, joblessness, and insufficient Financial Support for family, friends and our government, besides these slings and arrows of outrageous fortune they have to bear arms against personal demons as well. Low selfesteem. Irresponsibility. Naivety. Bizarre sexual involvement. Despond and see. Despair leading even to attempted suicide. It is almost incredible the whips and thorns these women bear. And with great fortitude. Certainly these women are not unique in their struggles. In fact they are in part representative of the whole category of women across appalachia as well as across america. A whole sector of women who, like them, struggled greatly in lives off the beaten path. As this book attempts to image they exist across appalachia like what we have all seen as we have proven with a cut in a mountain pass. These women are, in part, representatives but they are not simply stereotypes, not of hillbillies, not of coal miners daughters, not of unemployed workers on welfare. They are not simply stereotypes of any group of southern appalachians or stereotypes of any sector of appalachia and i would be quick to add that any attempt to definitively label types or to define the essence of any group or sector of appalachia as complex as they both are is a fools game. In particular to this book, anyone attempting to find the essence of these women would be subject to a reproof by each woman, in the sentiment of hamlet, how unworthy of thing you make of me. You would pluck out the heart of my mystery. Even though these women are not simply stereotypes of appalachians they are part of the diverse city of appalachia and to understand appalachia, one needs to listen to the diverse individuals of appalachia and there is much music, much excellent voice from the people of appalachia, certainly in the voices of the women presented in this book. I would like to read an abstract from the first monologue will is entitled some would call her good over. I am not perfect. No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes and i did a lot of things. There were times to have relationships with women along with him and that sort of thing. Sometimes we bring home men, it was for him, it is not fun when you are forced to do it. I would go into the bathroom and cry. No one would believe the times i out of the room bawling my eyes out. I hated it. I hated doing it because of diseases and stuff out there. I thank the lord i never got anything. That scared me to death. I blocked out that, i got so drunk, plastered, to do that so a lot of times i dont remember what happened. He just threatened me. If you dont do this you are going to regret it when you get home. It hurts to see someone you truly love make love with someone else. Why would they want to do that if they truly love you . They should be happy in the marriage, you shouldnt be sad but i was sad, very sad and there were lots of things, it is almost disgusting to talk about some of the things, it turns your stomach and it forced me to do other weird things like take razor blades and cut himself and cut myself and feed on each others blood was crazy and if i brought up the thought of leaving him at that point he would threatened to kill himself. It was horrible. When you care and love somebody you just dont like doing that stuff. It turned am on, i guess. That was what he wanted. It was his sex drive or whatever, and that is what he enjoys doing. Later on i came to find out, sending in money to survive, because he said they werent making enough money, actually he was taking the money out, sending him, prostitutes, drugs, or whatever and i was working two jobs. When you are in an abusive relationship, some people think you can just walk out of it but you cant. You see these tv shows saying if you are being abused call this number. It is just not that simple. Especially if you love that person or you care for that person and you want to help them. It is really hard to walk away from somebody. It is also hard to explain. I am a caring person, tried to care and dont want to hurt a person you care about. Even though they are hurting, if you give them leeway to straighten up and they wont, it is hard. That is the situation during the open marriage, so off and on, for 10 years of the 13 years, all that stuff was just every once in a while although i would have to say no and then he would get really mad. I just couldnt handle it. I am just not that kind of person. Thank you so much, thomas burton. I enjoyed hearing from you. Up next we have sarah smarsh and she is going to be sharing her work. I am happy to join the southern book festival. On this particular panel in case anybody is scratching their head wire journalist from kansas is joining the discourse i have written a book about one of the most famous places of appalachia being dolly parton but i want to say if you read my first book, heartland, it is a hybrid of memoir and social critique, my grandmother betty, in this workingclass neighborhood, right next door, good kansas homeowners reroofing their own house, appropriate for my presentation, tend to write about the working class of the country but my new book she come by a natural, Dollywood Parton and the women who lived her songs, is from simon schuster, i wanted to mention scrivener. I am excited to tell you about it. I mentioned my first book heartland which is obvious integration, my work as a journalist, as someone who grew up, a book about dolly parton, you might pause and ask why this would be the followup. The most important way to introduce the text to you is give context as to why it exists. Im not a celebrity writer, i do write about class and how it intersects, and 2016 was an Election Year that has repercussions, the dawn of this polarized political moment we are experiencing. Every headline i saw, the place i come from, rural white for folks, and hate, bigotry, and aspect of that population or demographic that is certainly present but i happened to know, firstgeneration College Student who went on to ivy league, fortunate to intersect with rarefied spaces, folks like that existed every rung of the class latter among white folks specifically and so those headlines book me in a personal way, i wrote a lot of media criticism, one of the few folks with that particular lens within national media. The same year, dolly parton had a new album out for the first time in many years and was touring, putting on huge arena shows for the first time in a long time. I could see how the energy coalescing around that, i live in rural kansas had spent most of my life in kansas. Most of my industries entered in new york and have a lot of friends there. Tweeting about dolly parton, what do you know about dolly parton. I knew she was a huge icon. I didnt understand the extent to which, maybe none of it until recent years, to which shes not just a Creative Genius and now an icon of Popular Culture but an incredibly unifying figure, in a notable way and acclimate like today, intrigued by this and started thinking on it, that role, the place i come from, all these headlines about the worst of it, dolly parton doesnt represent the best of it. That got me thinking, a lot going on about gender, Hillary Clinton is a democratic president ial candidate, a lot of misogyny, that is an objective fact and it occurs to me, the don of the me too movement, there is something about feminism, something that circulated at least in a mainstream way and i was raised by, what i mean by that, it is not theory. It is not exclusive in its language, might not even be articulated or expressed in an overt way but lived organically. It occurred to me Country Music written by women that i was raised on is one of the formative feminist texts of my life i was then bringing to the year 2016 and all the ways that year was offending me at its intersection of class and gender. I was working on heartland at the time so was plenty busy and the great magazine, Country Music fans, long time, and to write in depth about the way to which that genre talked to or influences society and culture in a broader way. I want to write about how dolly parton relates to feminism. And happily now that text is now in book form. Im going to be just a smidge from it, and i want to add, by the way, while im finding my place that i wasnt raised like some sort of dolly parton a super fan. I was a kid in the 80s, and for anyone who was cognizant in that decade she was just sort of woven into the fabric of Popular Culture. You would see on a talk show. Her music was underrated. She was starring in blockbuster movies. She appropriate enough, if i took up the mantle of attempting to do justice to her life and career in this book, start and a first hollywood role, 95, the year that i was born, 1980. In some ways this book is really a gesture of gratitude to limit of her generation, not least of whom being my grandmother betty white mentioned a few minutes ago. I wrote about her struggles in heartland, at a sort of assert in his book into which which is that of a memoir, i wanted to buy some context as to why, what i get in a particular way, and that context is everything to do with my grandmother who raised me and he was born just like five months apart from dolly parton. I put forth in the book in some ways she and women like her are the real dolly parton, by which i mean stories she built her career on which every much about hard knocks and specifically hardluck lives as women. Dolly parton left her families holler in east tennessee at about age 18, so she had been rich and famous a lot longer then she was poor near pigeon forge, but she had continued to tell the stories of this sort of women that raised me and who i believe that we owe a debt of in a way the feminist movement proper perhaps hasnt afforded. This is a section called leaving home. Pardons career took off at the same moment that Womens Liberation Movement did. Providing of revealing contrast between feminism as political concept and feminism embodied in the world. Like most women in poverty, parton knew little of the former but excelled at the latter. You will get very far as a poor woman without believing you are equal to men. The result of that belief is unlikely to be a leaning in, possibly sound advice to middle and upperclass women seeking to claim that spoil. A poor womens better solution is often to turn around and walk away from a hopelessly patriarchal situation that she cannot possibly mend with a limited cultural capital. In the book i tell, as evidence along those lines the story of dolly parton quite prayed departure from the Porter Wagoner show when she was a young relatively new star with a sort of fragile state in Popular Culture in the early 70s. When parton left can and seems, a president ial Election Year. Thats a recurring theme here that in a place between figures like dolly and our political realities. The country was torn by political uprising and tragedy. Young men were returning from vietnam in caskets, president john f. Kennedy has been assassinated less than a year prior. In 1994 autobiography, dolly, she recalled hearing news of his death over her boyfriends car radio while en route to perform on the radio show during a school break. Quote, i have loved john kennedy in the wind when idealists recognize another and lets him for the place within himself that they share, she would. I did know about politics but i knew a lot of things were wrong and unjust and that kennedy wanted to change them. Her boyfriend, however, responded to the announcement by referring to kennedy with the racist epithet, basically. Relating to his advances and people of color. She promptly dumped him. The Womens Liberation Movement of the 60s and 70s had not yet reached fever pitch that kennedy had created a a commission on e status of women at the national or deceitful and that didnt exist pick strict conformance roles still trapped the novels as wives, but its an secondclass citizens. When dolly stepped off the National State come some of the foundational texts were yet to be published with the likelihood would reach or any have the women were too busy feeding hungry mouths come some for the isolated from discourse in a preinternet world place to read such a literature. Written in a form of english they didnt speak anyway. The reason i end up writing stuff like this by the ways when i took sometimes when i give talks, i speak to make versions of english, country and fancy. Country is my first tong, and i think parton has quite intentionally stayed true to that voice, regardless of what space she is moving living thr, because whether she is supposed to feel ashamed about it and that their strategic and potential and has worked out well for of course. Leaving home alone as a woman with professional aspirations and no financial needs demonstrated she wanted a better life and thought she deserved it. So no model existed for the journey ahead yard own imagination. The place where she pursued that might come the recording capital of Country Music, couldnt have been a more harrowing document for a woman. Even if america had by then put a a few small cracks in a city that help limit down, national was squarely situated under the thickest glass. Ill leave it there. Look forward to questions at the end. Thank you so much, sarah. I wanted to remind everybody, sarah smarsh is the author of she come by it natural, dolly and the women who lived her songs, out tuesday from scribner. Weve already heard from thomas burton. Use author of voices worth the listen, three women of appalachia, out from university press. As our final speaker we are going to hear from Wayne Winkler who is the author of beyond the sunset. Now from Mercer University press. As a limit of the tidbit, wayne and i actually distantly related. I am a descendent of a collins. Right. So we are cousins. Good to have you here, has. I would like to thank you for having here at the southern festival of books its a real honor and thank you very much for inviting me. People may be wondering who the malign gemzar. They are not the most wellknown group of people in the world but they are a group of mixed race people who are first documented in the northeast tennessee southwest virginia region about the beginning of the 19th century. In the 1990s as we, we became a widely accessible to ordinary people, they underwent a resurrection of interest mainly through the work of Brent Kennedy wrote a book entitled they were a proud people. I was proud to be able to work with dr. Kennedy and affordably dr. King the past i went about three weeks ago. I want to dedicate a bit of this to him. The reason they really became wellknown is i think the topic of the book and its what i wanted to write about because it wasnt a really wellknown episode in history. It was a very brief run for this particular outdoor drama just 19691976 what it represented a lot. Only part of that was representing the melungeons and their image to the world. A lot of it had to do with trying to make Hancock County a more viable place to live. I would like to read just a little bit of the Second Chapter which i think kind of sets up the situation pretty well. All Charlie Turner wanted was a road if not even a new road come just to fix up the one they had. With such much to ask . Charles turner was a mayor, the county seat of Hancock County and a tiny town wedged between the river and newman to reach. The future was a courthouse surrounded by a railroad when set, rolled cigarettes, gossiped and watched a little bit of traffic along main street. The other government building was a u. S. Post office come a redbrick building a couple of blocks east of the court us a mean streak in hancock, a 100yearold jew macs to reconstruct one block west and south of the courthouse on jail state. An Elementary School and high school were also within the town limits. Since taking office in 1861 turner had been trying to get the state or the federal government or somebody to improve the road to morris town. Morristown was only 23 miles from smallville but the trip from sneed fell to morris mozilla state highway 31. Highway 31 man between sneed to fail and more. Editor like to go west on u. S. 11 and then a left turn lead south on u. S. 25 into morristown. Morristown. Morristown was where the jobs were. Those with the people who worked at a job, that is made a living by means other than farming can help jobs in morristown working in one of the small factories, lumber yards of one of the other mostly bluecollar jobs to be found there. Morristown to just over 20,000 people so the 19,000 so living in surrounding Hancock County. 1834 people lived in sneed feel. Without worse than it would be practically no work for the people of Hancock County. The problem was the road. Highway 31 win over the mountain is technically along ridge incorporating several summits. The people who drove highway 31 every day new every twist and turn of the road. Good whether they had no problem negotiating the route day or night but i half inch of snow change the situation considerably. Snow didnt fall off in a northeast tennessee at you could count on at least three or four good snows in the winter. The mountain was high enough that snow stuck on the road near the top, even if it didnt stick down below. If the road became a seat or slick from heavy rains amount was a forbidden obstacle to even the most experienced drivers. They could guarantee that the last two moments of your life would be exciting indeed. Because of the mountainous state highway 31, they were reluctant to hire people from sneedville are Hancock County. They were good workers all right, good people but if the weather turned bad, even just a little bit bad, most of those good people were not going to risk the drive to show up to work. A good snow could keep them away from work for a week maybe more depending on when the state road crews finally got 31 clicker enough to drive. It helped if he told a prospective employer employer that if you got the job you were planning to move to morristown but it wasnt only jobs that two people out of Hancock County. Living in morristown meant you could shop for groceries in a ia real supermarket instead of one of the dozens of the country source that served Hancock County. You could go to a movie once in a while, a current movie come not like the ones at the transixteen to pick you could take a wife to a nice restaurant and you kids could go to a better school, one they could pay for better teachers and give your kids a better chance of learning a trade or even go to college. In morristown you could make a better life for yourself and your family. Charlie turner was well acquainted with the desire to move somewhere with more opportunity. Years later he would tell a reporter from up north, my whole High School Graduation class left but i just said i will be darned if i do that. I would just run for mayor into what i can do. He was just starting out he taught in a oneroom schoolhouse. Schoolhouse. Later he opened a drugstore. He wasnt a pharmacist like most people who live in small town drugstore is pretty stilted well. Well. When bit of drugstore business tourniquet and was developing photographs. He was a skilled photographer and that won several awards. Eventually he ran for mayor of sneedville. Hancock county was almost totally republican but charlie was a democrat and the only democrat and his family. Still he won the election and the one after that and the one after that. Charlie turner stayed in sneedville on his own terms and made it work by dinuba unusual his decision was the was a saying among former Hancock County residents, a lot of smart people come out of Hancock County. The smarter they are the quicker they come out. Most people are smart and ambitious as Charlie Turner got out of Hancock County sooner or later. The folks who left hancock for morristown or not really gone, not really. Were still connected. The ones who lived in morristown or nearby refer to Hancock County as over home as in, are you going over home this weekend . Mommy and daddy still to live n the old family four. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins and old friends were still over home and you could be there for for a visitn less than an hour most days. Some of those who moved to morristown were still very involved in life over home, some still attend the church with a high condescend to school and had been baptized. Some were even involved in Hancock County government. When folks moved to morristown they reduce the population, added the tax base and made it harder to provide services to the ones who remained. Many people moved further away than morris ten. A whole colony of transplanted Hancock County lived in or near baltimore drawn away during world war ii by good paying jobs at shipyards and defense plants. Even more had moved north indiana, ohio and michigan taking factory jobs with union paychecks, making more money than was possible even more stem. They still came him sometimes most of them every two or three times a year when the kids got a vacation from school. They would load up the family car and head south down home. Interstate 75, the hillbilly highway slowly being built across kentucky and nearly every time these transplanted Hancock County gets cable a little more of trip was made on a fourlane divided road. The transplants are different after been gone a while. The different attitudes. Some of them it stopped going to church or were going to a different kind of church and the one they had grown up in. They had become more cosmopolitan. Folks at home felt the transplants look down on them. Their kids at midwestern accents and they had tales of life in the big city. As time went on and the kids get older and busier, those families made the trip back, less often. Pretty soon they would come back up only for funerals they were not part of the county anymore. They were gone. By 1969 Hancock County had fewer people that it had in 1869. The population the population had peaked in 1940. 1940. Census figures showed 11,231 living in the county. The 1960 census census counted only 7757, a a population lossf almost 31 in 20 years. Since 1960 Charlie Jessica leeds 1000 more have left the county. The birth rate couldnt keep up with the number of people leaving for better Job Opportunities elsewhere. As mayor of sneedville Charlie Turner dont attract some new jobs to the county seat. The voters had almost unanimously approved a bond issue to develop an additional park. Senator albert moore helped the county land and 90,000 grant from the federal Economic Development administration to further develop the property. That would bring as many as 135 new jobs into the county, eventually. Improving highway 31 was crucial. That road was a lifeline for Hancock County. If the road when its a dangerous people could commute to work in morristown and remain in Hancock County. There were only format was in and out of Hancock County. Five if you can to state highway 66, but highway 33 was the important one. None of these highways were as important to sneedville in Hancock County and state highway 31. An triazine might charlie turn had not been able to get the road improved but now, that he could see a chance. If no one would build a vote for people going out of snake, maybe they would build a vote for people coming in. I can do when else, turner had his doubts about the idea of an outdoor drama. Still those professors from carson and the college and study the county Economic Situation and told to get the best chance of development was tourism and the best chance of developing tourism was with an outdoor drama. Outdoor dramas were popular and attractive tourist even to small towns. Boone was called a chance home of Appalachian State university and had a direct highway connection to winstonsalem and interstate i40 your trail of the lonesome pines form 35 miles of sneedville was the longest running outdoor drama in the commonwealth of virginia. Big stone gap was a few 23 a major highway that ran from jacksonville, florida, to Mackinaw City michigan. The park to billions each year. Sneedville wasnt close to think of no major highways or course attractions. Term and at a local leaders were counting on the outdoor drama to entice tourists across the mountain into account the like any of the usual amenities are tourist restaurant or motels. They were sure the green top and serve good food, very good food as a matter fact, with the exterior of the restaurant looked rough and the interior wasnt much better in the town motel, that was just five rooms of the beauty part on main street. To know not many folks came to sneedville needing a motel room but if the tories came the rest of the motels might follow. That was the hope anyway charlie turn and other leaders at Hancock County were counting on the subject to attract tourists but it was the subject of the plates have been so controversial. Even the word melungeons was spoken in public and no one in the be identified as the melungeons. One had been upset from that saturday evening post article came out but the melungeons Hancock County dirty little secret. Times are changing though and people are starting to see melungeons in a different light. Those articles in the nashville tennessean had not been as negative as the post article. Other articles been published in verse newspapers and magazines that new novel by jesse stuart daughter of the legend was very sympathetic to the melungeons. People are curious about the melungeons. If Hancock County didnt take offense of that curiosity come some other place would and would reap the benefits. If the melungeons hancock counties best shot at attacking tourist, then the people of sneedville when you give it a try, even if hardly anyone in the county admitted to being a melungeon. As thursday, july 3, 1969 john in sneedville charlie turn had a lot of work to do. It was going to be an historic Independence Day weekend. For the first time tourists were going to arrive in sneedville. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Wayne Winkler. And as a reminder Wayne Winkler is the author of beyond the sunset. We have about eight minutes left to answer any questions that you all may have for our panelists. So if you would like to, please join us in either the app or on her Facebook Live stream or youtube comments. One of our southern humanity and seven fso of books Staff Members will be monitoring for any questions that you may have. I i guess i will start us off while were waiting for people to join us. All of you spoke a little bit about, and i wrote this down from doctor burton. One of the women in his book said its really hard to walk away from a person. And i think that is kind of a conversation that were having, especially in these rural places now about walking away from people or places or economic opportunities, infamously mr. J. D. Vance said in his book hillbilly elegy that these Rural Regions were experiencing brain drain. So could you talk a little bit about what your research or your writing has uncovered about people moving away from these communities . Well, the person go ahead. I was going to say i actually, about a year ago, wrote an opinion piece for the new york times, the headline for which had included the phrase brain gain. I think i might comment on this briefly. In terms of quantitative measures about which direction the population is flowing and that proverbial rural urban divide which of course is not a dichotomy, it has many more shades then two, but numbers are starting to show that some of these communities that are sort of hatley referred to as dying for dwindling our game in some interesting ways. A lot of that has to do with demographic shifts, plays like western kansas with is a robust and daschle meatpacking industry are seeing large increases specifically in the hispanic and other immigrant populations. But even apart from race, ive seen a sort of trend of a return, if you will. A great kentucky writer and thinker referred to these folks as home commerce. I think that was point by keynes and made west jackson at the lincoln institute. This is something i feel like it is only the start at a kind of qualitative experience for those of us who live in rural areas care about them, resisting the narratives about they are all ghost towns. I know people, i know people who could if they chose live in new york of the places and their choosing to specifically return to rural spaces that they used to live. They are highly formally educated. I do think theres something shifting in our culture about what is and isnt cool pic as far as what is tenable economically thats another story and evolves like getting broadband in his places and so on. It might surprise you all if you read my writing to know that i i disagree with j. D. Vance on most things. I was going to address that situation. Your question in a way about moving out isnt as appropriate to the area that i was talking about, or these women were from, central appalachia. They are a part of the central pockets of poverty. Now, one of the women, a a blak woman, her life began in poverty. She started out when she was born, her mother was living in various places, and one of them was with a friend. Finally, they got a place of their own and it was infested with rats and she thought it was horrible and hated it. Finally they got into the project, that was a good place for her because she had friends come and clean house, clean room and so forth. Instead of moving out someplace to find a better place, she started working as a very young person, she worked every summer, for example, when she was in high school, then as a senior in high school she worked even from 3 00 at night until 11 00, and then went to school the next day and kept a 3. 5 average. Shes kind of a success story. She goes ahead and works, even though her boyfriend has become her husband, is a drug addict for 14 years or so. She gets a job. She thinks she will go to college, business college. She got a degree in medical assistantship. And worked there. Then she went from there to go to the university, got a University Degree and became a nurse. Then she still working as a nurse and without, you know, leaving. The first woman i read from, she, she is a hard worker that she had problems ive even transportation of even getting to work. The situation was not good for her. She couldnt keep a job because she couldnt get to it. She tried, she got her son to give her transportation and so forth. Finally she did move out and went to virginia beach, i believe. I think, i think its a different situation in the circumstances to the women i was talking about. These women who were living these lives, under very difficult out of the mainstream, but its not within a povertystricken place that they are trying to get away from. Thank you so much, dr. Burton. We have about a minute left, so i would once again like to remind you guys that the link to purchase these books, voices worth listening to, three women in appalachia, three women of appalachia, voices worth listening, she combines natural, dolly parton thank you, and beyond the sunset. The link to purchase those are in our chat, and as a reminder please donate to humanities tennessee to allow this to remain a free event. Thank you all so much for joining me. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. You are watching booktv on cspan2, we can with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Booktv on cspan2 created by americas cableTelevision Companies. Today we are prosecuted by the Television Companies who provide booktv to viewers as a public service. Good evening, everyone. My name is conor moran and im the director of the wisconsin book festival and i am delighted to be joined tonight by brian greene, author of until the end of time and janna levin, the author of the black hole survival guide. We joined this evening by eric wilcox who is a colleague of mine sitting on the wisconsin science festival board but also the dean of the