Daughters of Green Mountain Gap by Teri M Brown ~ A Review

by Susan Roberts

An Appalachian granny woman. A daughter on a crusade. A granddaughter caught between the two.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

January 2024; Atmosphere Press; 979-8891320567
ebook, print (324 pages); historical fiction

This new historical fiction novel by Teri M. Brown has all of the components that I enjoy in novels - a beautiful setting that is so well described that you feel like you're walking with the main characters, strong women and family.  The setting is in the Appalachian mountains in the late 1800s.  Life is changing in the world but it takes time for things to change in the rural small towns in the mountains.  The three main characters are

• Maggie - a granny woman who uses folklore, family traditions and her learnings from the Cherokee tribe. She believes that the best way to help someone get better is with the use of herbs and roots and the old time methods that she learned from her ancestors.  She is well respected in the community.
• Carrie Ann is Maggie's daughter.  She has a degree in nursing from a university and she is adamantly against her mother's way of healing the sick.  She believes in modern medicine and looks down on the old ways.  She is extremely rude to her mother and makes her feelings towards her mother's beliefs known every chance she gets.
• Josie is Carrie Ann's daughter and Maggie's granddaughter.  She has spent most of her young life with her grandmother while her mother was getting her nursing degree.  She is very respectful of her grandmother and the ways she uses to help heal.  As she gets older, she also learns to respect her mother's beliefs in modern medicine and isn't sure which way is the best.

The main thing that all three of these women have in common is their desire to help the sick but their differences come from what is the best way to help.  Maggie wants to use the old ways, Carrie Ann wants to use the modern way and Josie sees good in both ways.  All three women are well-written and it was easy to care about them and their outcome in the novel.  Carrie Ann is a bit harder to like because she is so sure that her way is the right way that she's rude to anyone who disagrees with her.  But you still have to admire her tenacity and her strong beliefs.

The author has done considerable research into medicine and healing during this time period and points out how the beliefs in medicine were slowly changing.  She also gives her readers something to think about once the book is finished.  Is there a total right and wrong on this issue - even today?  Some people still believe that faith and folklore will heal and others rely totally on the science of modern medicine.  Is the answer somewhere in the middle of the two extremes?

This was a fantastic book and one that I'll remember long after the last page.

Buy Daughters of Green Mountain Gap at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she is two hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.   

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