Summary

In 1945, West Virginia author Julia Davis penned The Shenandoah as part of the Rivers of America Series, a landmark collection of books written by literary figures over a period of thirty years. In this classic reprint, now with an introduction by Christopher Camuto, Davis tells the history of the Shenandoah Valley and River, drawing on her own research and the experiences of ancestors who settled and lived in the area. Her book provides a poetic vision of both the river and the valley, preserving a fragment of America’s landscape.

Contents

• Introduction
•   Christopher Camuto
• Map
•   George Annand
   
• Part I: Promise
•   1. Song
•   2. The Unrecorded Past
•   3. Exploration
•   4. Settlement
•   5. Pioneers
•   6. Washington
•   7. Massacres
•   8. Fort Loudoun
•   9. Revolution
•   10. Expansion
•   11. Inventions
   
• Part II: Holocaust
•   12. The Fateful Lightning
•   13. The Swift Sword
•   14. Marching On
•   15. The Invaded
•   16. Valley Campaign I
•   17. Valley Campaign II
•   18. Valley Campaign III
•   19. The Long Year
•   20. The Burning
•   21. The Starving Crows
   
• Part III: The Recovery
•   22. The Hero
•   23. The Fait
•   24. Fool’s Gold and True Gold
•   25. Past Into Present
•   26. Valley Tour I
•   27. Valley Tour II
•   28. Valley Tour III
•   29. Epilogue
•   30. Postscript
   
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• About the Author

Author

Julia Davis Adams (1901–1993) was born in Clarksburg, WV, attended Wellesley College, and graduated from Barnard College in 1922. She began her career as a reporter for the Associated Press in New York City, where she also headed the adoption service of the Children’s Aid Society in the early 1960s. She authored two dozen books.

Christopher Camuto is the author of a rough-hewn trilogy on the southern Appalachians—A Fly Fisherman’s Blue Ridge, Another Country: Journeying Toward the Cherokee Mountains, and Hunting from Home: A Year Afield in the Blue Ridge Montains—as well as Time and Tide in Acadia: Seasons on Mount Desert Island. He manages a biodiversity perserve, an 80-acre eco-restoration of old farm fields, woodlots, and wetlands, in Pennsylvania.