WMRA's Micro Books & Brews: M.S. Marangione

WMRA’s Micro Books & Brews features Maggie Marangione, discussing her book, Across the Blue Ridge Mountains

Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7pm.

Live at Rockfish Valley Community Center.

Signed copies of, Across the Blue Ridge Mounains will be available at the event and online at Stone Soup Books.

WMRA's Micro Books & Brews is made possible thanks to our series sponsor, Realtor & Investor Bevin Cetta Boisvert. More info at Bevinsellscville.com

About Across the Blue Ridge Mountains:

Mary, the protagonist, makes a fateful decision to run off with a grifter to escape her abusive mother. The novel follows her exile from her family, abandonment in a West Virginia coal camp, and how she eventually flourishes with a family on Hightop Mountain in what is now Shenandoah National Park. Surrounded by nature, she heals from her traumas and discovers the power of female friendships. Empowered, she confronts the long arm of the federal government when over 1,000 families are told to abandon their homes and she fights to save her home and way of life. Even when the government burns down her home, her resilience and grace in the face of adversity become her beacon and ultimately deliver her from herself.

 M.S. Marangione fell in love with the Blue Ridge Mountains when in her early twenties  and moved to Virginia from New York. One evening, when at the Alexandria  Public Library in Northern Virginia, she came across a display on  Shenandoah National Park with photos of the mountain families and books  like Hollow Folk, the Undying Past of Shenandoah National Park,  Recollections; The People of the Blue Ridge Remember. At that time, the  mid-1980s, these were the only books published, and Hollow Folk was  highly biased. Yet, it lit a fire in her to discover more about the  people and families of the Shenandoah National Park.