Virginia native Meredith Battle’s debut novel is the first fictionalized version of the story of the mountain people who were evicted from their homes in the 1930s to make way for Shenandoah National Park, some of them imprisoned and forcibly sterilized.
Go Down the Mountain is a frank and sometimes unsettling look at what life was like for America’s poorest during the Great Depression and the eugenics movement. It is at once a dramatic adventure, a moving love story and the recollection of a vanished life. The story follows Bee, a nervy mountain teen whose father’s sudden death has left her to face her abusive mother alone, on her harrowing journey to discover the truth about her family, living and dead.
The novel will be released April 23, 2019.