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New Dominion Bookshop is located at 404 East Main St., on the Downtown Mall, Charlottesville, Va. For further information, please call 434-295-2552 or e-mail us at ndb@cstone.net .

Our guest will be

Phil James

will discuss and present selections from his new book of stories

from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia

Secrets of the Blue Ridge: Stories from western Albemarle 

Wednesday, December 14 at 12:15 PM

 “Everybody has a piece of the story” says Phil James, and he has been seeking out and assembling many of those pieces across four decades of personal research among the neighborhoods of his native Blue Ridge Mountains. Photographs accompanying the text have been borrowed not from the depths of academic archives, but from family scrapbooks and photo albums entrusted to him.

 Visit the villages of western Albemarle County and some of the homes of those who lived along the Blue Ridge Mountains. Listen to stories of ballad singers, railroad workers, and moonshiners. Ride along on a hunt in the mountains or take in a shoot-’em-up double feature on Saturday at the local movie theater. ~ Take a little time to be reminded of those places where your heart calls home.

Review

… The first thing readers marvel over are the stare-inducing photographs [Phil James] manages to find. Next is his avuncular style, so sympathetic to the lives of those who have been here before us, and often trailing a moral.

A tactful and disarming interviewer who honors confidences, Phil gets around to visiting elders, taking down their stories, and preserving their photographs. To gaze on these, with their plain truths, and to listen to these voices, is to become humbled by our ancestors, for what they endured, what they achieved and what they bequeathed to us. That is a good point to make, given how ready we are to think the world was not here before we were.

— Michael J. Marshall, Editor, The Crozet Gazette

 Phil James is a native of western Albemarle County, Virginia. His award winning column, Secrets of the Blue Ridge, has appeared regularly in The Crozet Gazette since 2006. In addition to sharing his passion for local history with school and civic groups, he has taught university-level short courses through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Virginia.