Keowee valley
Bell Bridge Books, 2012
Spring, 1768. The Southern frontier is a treacherous wilderness inhabited by the powerful Cherokee people. In Charlestown, 25 year-old Quincy MacFadden receives news from beyond the grave: her cousin, a man she’d believed long dead, is alive—held captive by the Shawnee Indians. Unmarried, bookish, and plagued by visions of the future, Quinn is a woman out of place… and this is the opportunity for which she’s been longing.
Determined to save two lives, her cousin’s and her own, Quinn travels the rugged Cherokee Path into the South Carolina Blue Ridge. Defying her furious grandfather and colonial law, she barters for leverage against the Shawnee with a notorious Cherokee chief—and begins building a daring new home in the Keowee River Valley, a fiercely beautiful place.
But in order to rescue her cousin, Quinn must trust an enigmatic half-Cherokee tracker whose loyalties may lie elsewhere. As translator to the British army, Jack Wolf walks a perilous line between a King he hates and a homeland he loves.
Together they journey across the Appalachian Mountains and into the heart of Cherokee country. They encounter wily trappers, warring Indians, British soldiers, desperate settlers, and a contested backcountry on the brink of changing forever.
When Jack is ordered to negotiate for Indian loyalty in the Revolution to come, the pair must decide: obey the Crown, or commit treason….
praise for keowee valley
“Keowee Valley is Katherine Scott Crawford’s stunning debut novel. You will savor her artful prose and storytelling. She writes of the American south, in particular the mountains, with awe and wonder. South Carolina has never been more evocative or beautiful. The story of Quincy and Jack is compelling and real. A glorious debut from a gifted author.”
~ Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Big Stone Gap and The Shoemaker’s Wife
“Katherine Scott Crawford has merged history and drama in this compelling story of one woman’s boldness and courage. Crawford is a fresh and valuable new voice in Southern Literature.”
~ Ron Rash, author of Serena and Saints at the River; recipient of the O. Henry Prize and the John Parris Chair of Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University
“Keowee Valley is a terrific first novel by Katherine Scott Crawford–a name that should be remembered. She has a lovely prose style, a great sense of both humor and history, and she tells about a time in South Carolina that I never even imagined.”
~ Pat Conroy, New York Times Bestselling author of The Prince of Tides
“At its heart, Keowee Valley is an exquisitely crafted love letter to a land and culture swallowed up by an encroaching civilization and inescapable change.”
“With a distinctive voice and fine eye for the details that shape character, Katherine Scott Crawford richly depicts a fascinating time and place. Her themes are are not only southern but human.”
~ Elise Blackwell, author of The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish and Director of the MFA in Writing program at the University of South Carolina
“In Quincy MacFadden, Crawford creates a feisty, gutsy heroine who survives those fraught years before the American Revolution in Appalachian Indian country, finding love even as she defines the spirit that will create a nation. The frontier equivalent to Abigail Adams in Boston or Dolley Madison in Philadelphia. I read it in one eager, page-turning sitting.”
~ Beverly Swerling, author of City of Promise and Shadowbrook
“I grew up going to Sunday ride through the very terrain of Keowee Valley. Little did I know that such poignant and dramatic history lay buried centuries deep in the landscape that our ’63 Chevrolet traversed, and little did I imagine that one day a sensual, evocative and compelling writer like Katherine Scott Crawford was going to come along and render that history into a gripping, magically embodied novel that would stay with me long after I had put it down.”
~ Tommy Hays, author of The Pleasure Was Mine
“To the stellar list of Appalachian fiction writers we can now add Katherine Scott Crawford for her impressive Keowee Valley. Crawford manages to interweave the historical and the personal in this novel, and, perhaps more important, gives voice to the landscape in which this story takes place. Well-grounded and well-narrated, this novel will take its place in the library of any reader who cares about Appalachian literature.”
~ Kathryn Stripling Byer, author of Wildwood Flower and Black Shawl, 2005-2009 Poet Laureate of North Carolina
“Keowee Valley is a wonderful story, and Katherine Scott Crawford is a powerful witness to the lost world of the Southern frontier when much of it was Cherokee land. Her understanding of the complex history of the times and her obvious love (and intimate knowledge of) the landscape make this book a treasure, especially to those of us who knew the gorgeous Keowee Valley in South Carolina before it was destroyed by a power company lake. Above all, though, this is the story of a strong woman, Quincy MacFadden, and her equally strong half-Cherokee soul mate, Jack Wolf. Their passion in this doomed world is the lens through which one can once again touch and be touched by a place that was once so beautiful, so historically important, and which has now so tragically vanished.”
~ Philip Lee Williams, author of A Distant Flame, winner of the Michael Shaara Prize for Civil War fiction
“Adventure and romance abound in Katherine Scott Crawford’s rich and evocative debut novel. From the bustling streets of colonial Charleston to the beauty and savagery of the untamed Carolina wilderness, the reader is swept up in the tale of one woman’s quest for independence on the American frontier, and of the extraordinary man she meets along the way who finally tames her heart. Keowee Valley is a story of the courage and passion it takes to follow a dream, and of the sacrifices often required in order to hold on to it.”
~ Darci Hannah, author of The Exile of Sara Stevenson and The Angel of Blythe Hall