A mere 73 days after a ragtag South Carolina militia attacked Fort
Sumter launching the War Between the States, a band of railroad
executives and politicians from 27 Virginia counties met in
Wheeling, then Virginia's third largest city, and laid the
foundation for our nation's 35th state, West Virginia. Born amidst
the Sturm und Drang of our nation's most tragic and disruptive
event, West Virginia is the first and only state created from
another state without the parent state's consent. The lore which
emerged was purposefully designed to imbue its citizens with pride
and righteous purpose. The border is as craggy and haphazard as the
topography upon which it was superimposed, a beautiful, tragic, and
widely misunderstood swath of the central Appalachia. Michael
Abraham was raised as a member of an ethnic minority by a Northern
father and a Southern mother in a small southwest Virginia town.
With Blue Bloods to the east, hillbillies to the west, and
evangelical Christians everywhere, he forged an egalitarian ethos
and a kinship with those who tied their fortunes, sensibilities,
and affections to rugged, isolated areas. In The Spine of the
Virginias, Abraham chips away at the West Virginia formation myth.
He follows with a collection of contemporary vignettes of people
and places on both sides of the border of Virginia and West
Virginia, in revealing looks at the interaction between a landscape
and its people. Inspired by the quote, "Culture is something we
think other people have," Abraham profiles doctors, lawyers,
journalists, miners, and businesspeople; senators, mayors, and
gubernatorial candidates; filmmakers, musicians, and artists;
beekeepers, maple syrup producers, brick sculptors, and barbarians.
This palette is infused with green and brown earthtones, the canvas
is a richly corrugated and rugged parchment, and the patina is a
pall of resentment, resignation, affection, divided loyalties, and
constitutional ambiguities.
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