Author Talk with Earl Swift: Up On Cove Mountain

Stone Soup Books is proud to welcome NYTimes best-selling author Earl Swift and his latest novel Up On Cove Mountain: Adventure, Tragedy, and the Quest for Meaning on the Appalachian Trail.

In 1990, a youthful Earl Swift backpacked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, a transformative experience that colored every aspect of his later life. He emerged from his hike across the rugged, sky-high roof of fourteen eastern states a sharper and more organized thinker, a better problem solver, and a committed outdoorsman.

But he also left the AT with baggage: Early in his odyssey, he spent time with a couple of other southbounders, who were friendly, capable, and doing everything right, but who were nonetheless murdered weeks later at a mountaintop campsite in Pennsylvania—a fit of violence that the killer never explained.

Half a lifetime later, Swift returned to the trail to find out whether he was still, in his sixties, equal to the AT’s roller-coaster terrain. Driving him, too, was a quest for answers that had nagged at him since that first hike: What had happened at that campsite to turn two smart, bighearted people into prey? Why had fate chosen them, when other hikers—Swift included—seemed more likely candidates? And how could such a grisly episode have unfolded in the backcountry’s sylvan loveliness, not to mention one of the safest places around?

Up on Cove Mountain is the arresting account of Swift’s 2024 trek through the AT’s enduring wonders and the ghosts of its past, a chronicle of swashbuckling adventure coupled with a meditation on the nature of risk and the risks of nature.

Earl Swift: I'm a lifelong journalist, a line of work that's seen me enjoy a lengthy string of adventures on someone else's dime. My assignments have seen me spend more than a year on a remote Chesapeake Bay island. Accompany an archaeological expedition into the Laotian jungle, and help dig through the ruins of a crashed B-17 in Papua New Guinea. Canoe the 435-mile James River, kayak a great circle around the

Chesapeake, and live at the top of a lighthouse. Tailhook on aircraft carriers. Wade alongside six-foot catfish in the sewers of St. Louis. And, not least, twice hike the Appalachian Trail.

     Even better, I've then had the opportunity to share these exploits in ten books and hundreds of major features for newspapers and magazines.

     I hope you'll find a story among those here that appeals to you--or several stories that do. If you honor me by reading anything I've written, I'd love to hear what you think, good or bad. The "Contact" page lays out all the ways we can connect.

     Promoting books sends me on the road, so I may well be showing up in your neighborhood before long. I hope that if so, you'll come out and say hello. The "What's New" page here will keep you abreast of where I'll be and when I'll be there.

     Here's hoping that the next time we meet, it's in person. 

     In the meantime, thanks again.

Event Information:

Date: Thursday, August 20th

Time: 6pm: Welcome

6: 30pm Author discussion

Place: Stone Soup Books

402 W Main St.

Waynesboro, VA 22980

Books will be available and author will be signing books during event. RSVPs are appreciated, but not required.