LOOK BACK WITH LOVE: A Recollection of the Blue Ridge

This is a paean to the beauties of the Blue Ridge and its sturdy mountain folk, a series of disjointed reminiscences which relate loosely to the homey chapter-head quotes about various dearly departeds, called from the old diary of ""Uncle Jake"" Carpenter of Three Mile Creek. The chapters combine bits of highland history with personal recollections of the author's wilderness travels and sundry and divers stories told her with a chuckle by hospitable mountaineers (e.g., the saga of Miss Emma who, jilted by the careless love of her youth, Devil Jim. Devon, decides he hasn't just lit out but has been turned into a rabbit; when her pap shoots and totes home a surprisingly cooperative rabbit, she knows it's Jim, buries it with tears in the turnip patch, mourns for twenty-five years, then abruptly consents to become the third wife of the thrifty Mr. Fetty). The remembrances are replete with cross-stitch samplers, homemade brogans, quilting frames, old shot pouches, cherry-bark bitters, and chaws of tobacco."" Very mountain-dewy, but the nostalgia is not necessarily, infectious.