Historic Tales of Highlands

Helen Hill Norris grew up in Horse Cove, perched high in the Southern Appalachians outside Highlands, North Carolina. For a decade starting in 1958, she wrote a weekly column for the Highlander called “Looking Backward.” Drawing on her childhood and the tales her elders would tell around the fireplace, Norris conjures a bygone frontier world of covered wagons, gold miners, traveling peddlers and headstrong shopkeepers. Witness a harrowing Civil War encounter with the notorious Kirk’s Raiders. Come along as a six-mule wagon carries a Steinway grand piano across the treacherous Chattooga River. Watch two uncles go to extremes to settle an argument over whether moles have teeth. Evocative, richly detailed and often laugh-out-loud funny, these stories reveal Norris to be one of the finest unsung storytellers of the American South.