In Blanche, Brenda Kay Ledford and her mother wear the surrounding Trout Cove like a charm. A log cabin appear in the scratches of chickens. A lonesome whippoorwill’s call at Rainbow Falls echoes mother and daughter as one with the Blue Ridge Mountains where clouds look like angels riding chariots in a hymn. Startlingly authentic, looming universally for a region the poet knows, Blanche “fords the stream,” makes “lye soap,” does laundry on “wash day” with “gnarled hands” among “wild flowers” that are “old friends.” The Blue Ridge Mountains rise–alive!
–Shelby Stephenson, former Poet Laurate of North Carolina, 2015-2018, author of Shelby’s Lady: The Hog Poems
