If You Like Lee Smith

Updated 9/2009

My Old True Love  by Sheila Kaye Adams
In a haunting novel set during the Civil War in the mountains of Appalachia, a young girl raises her brother and their cousin together like her own children, but the close relationship between the two young men is threatened when they both fall in love with the same woman.

Wish You Well by David Baldacci
A coming-of-age story set in New York City and the mountains of Virginia in the 1940s. Lou and Oz Cardinal leave New York with their mother and hear to live on their great-grandmother’s farm.

Moon Women by Pamela Duncan
Ruth Ann’s life is turned upside down when she takes in her elderly mother, her pregnant 19-year-old daughter and her ex-husband, in a story of three generations of women separated by a long-hidden family secret.

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
The quiet Midwestern life of the Land family is upended when the oldest son Davy kills two teenage boys who have come to harm the family. On the morning of his sentencing, Davy escapes from his cell, and his father and siblings set out through the Badlands in search of him.

Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons
Charlie Kate travels around the country with her herb bag as a midwife and healer, delivering her own daughter Sophia, but in 1904, her marriage ends, and she and Sophia live alone until Sophia gives birth to daughter Margaret, the narrator of the story.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf
An unlikely extended family is formed when a high school teacher helps a pregnant student make a home with two elderly bachelor ranchers.

Clay’s Quilt by Silas House
Clay Sizemore, a coal miner in love, searches his family history for clues about who he is, uncovering a dramatic story woven into the fabric of his uncle’s quilts.

The Coal Tattoo by Silas House
Left to raise themselves in a small coal-mining town in Tennessee, Anneth and Easter, two very different sisters – one destined for the glittering world of Nashville, the other a devout Pentecostal – struggle to come to terms with the death of their mother as their long difficult journey brings them back to their origins and to each other.

Rich in Love by Josephine Humphreys
When the fabric of her family is suddenly torn apart, Lucille Odom, a wise and precocious high-school student locates new inner resources and steps across the threshold of womanhood and emotional maturity.

Bad Girl Creek by Jo-Ann Mapson
Four wounded women heal their hearts by opening a flower farm together, where they discover the importance of friendship.

Tending to Virginia by Jill McCorkle
This down-home saga centers around Virginia, pregnant and estranged from her husband. Her mother, trashy best friend/second cousin, partially lucid grandmother and others hover around her with advice, arguments and revelations.

Gap Creek by Robert Morgan
The story of a young woman’s struggles in early 20th-century Appalachia.

A Place Called Wiregrass by Michael Morris
Fleeing an abusive husband, an uncaring mother and a soul-numbing dead-end factory job, Erma Lee and her granddaughter Cher seek refuge in the town of Wiregrass, Alabama, where they hope to start over. They form an unlikely friendship with Miss Claudia, an elderly socialite with her own secret past.

How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto
As members of a women’s quilting group work their art, their stories of grief, passion, youth and age are played out in a multigenerational, multi-layered narrative.

Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
Rose, a beautiful and mysterious woman living at St. Elizabeth’s home for unwed mothers, has no intention of telling her mother or her husband about her pregnancy, until a healing spring near home changes her mind.

Life Without Water by Nancy Peacock
A young girl living with her Hippie mother and communal family tries to help her mother recover from the devastating loss of a brother in the Vietnam War.

Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani
A 35-year-old, self-proclaimed spinster in a small Virginia village discovers a skeleton in her family’s formerly tidy closet, which completely unravels her quiet, conventional life.