Summary

In the mid-1970s, Nancy L. Abrams, a young photojournalist from the Midwest, plunges into life as a small-town reporter in West Virginia. She befriends the hippies on the commune one mountaintop over, rents a cabin in beautiful Salt Lick Valley, and falls in love with a local boy, wrestling to balance the demands of a job and a personal life. She learns how to survive in Appalachia—how to heat with coal and wood, how to chop kindling, plant a garden, and preserve produce.

The Climb from Salt Lick is the remarkable memoir of an outsider coming into adulthood. It is the story of a unique place and its people from the perspective of a woman who documents its burdens and its beauty, using words and pictures to tell the rich stories of those around her.

Contents

Prologue

Section I: A Home
1          Carpetbagger               
2          Salt Lick and Calamity                        
3          Non Compos Mentis              
4          Embedded                   
5          I Grow Fond              
6          Take Me Home, Country Roads                   
7          Real Life                     
8          Salt Lick                    
9          Through Calamity                   
10        A Doctor! And He’s Jewish!            
11        Ramps             
12        The Commune Down Salt Lick, Part 1                    
13        Pot Roast                    

Section II: A Mate
14        Switching Gears                  
15        Judy Judy Judy                    
16        Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend              
17        Disaster Practice                   
18        West Virginia Brigadoon                  
19        The Commune Down Salt Lick, Part 2                     
20        Civil War                  
21        Deer Dear Friend                   
22        Happy Daze             
23        Why Is This Night Different?                       
24        Black Power               
25        The Murderer and Me                       
26        Buckwheat Baby                   
27        Apple Cider               
28        Busted            
29        Dilettante       
30        The Nesting Instinct
31        Experiments with Utopia      
32        Changes in Altitude               
33        The Cheat 1               
34        The Cheat 2
35        The Climb from Salt Lick      

Author

Nancy L. Abrams is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where she trained as a photojournalist. She has worked as a photographer, writer, and editor at The Preston County News and the Dominion Post, where she edited the Sunday magazine Panorama. She holds an MFA in creative writing-nonfiction from The New School and has been a professional writer and photographer for four decades.

Reviews

"The Climb from Salt Lick is sort of a reverse Hillbilly Elegy, the story of a young woman who flummoxes her family back in St. Louis by settling in remote, rural West Virginia, giving us a glimpse into hardscrabble living, small-town characters, and a slice of history. Especially charming is the chapter in which Abrams recalls the preparations for the fiftieth anniversary of Arthurdale, the planned community funded by the New Deal and championed by Eleanor Roosevelt. This is an endearing memoir of a relatively prosperous time (the 1970s were good for West Virginia coal), a woman who drives too fast chasing after stories, and a landscape that is long overdue for some appreciation."
Booklist

"Abrams's work is a great corrective to ugly caricatures of Appalachia such as J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. She shows that a newcomer can flourish even in the most unforgiving terrain, and that curiosity can trump narrow-mindedness even in the most remote climes."
Chicago Reader

“This memoir is a love story—for a West Virginia man, for a West Virginia journalism career, and ultimately, for the state itself. Abrams’s palpable love for West Virginia allows her to combine the wonder of an intelligent, respectful outsider with the passion of an Appalachia native.”
Sarah Beth Childers, author of Shake Terribly the Earth: Stories from an Appalachian Family

“A must-read for West Virginians. For journalists and would-be journalists. For feminists, young and old. And mothers. For old hippies and anybody who came of age in the sixties and seventies. For anybody who’s taken a toke or two. For anybody who has tried to balance integrity with duty, dropping out with pursuing a career while trying to succeed as a breadwinner and parent.”
Sara Pritchard, author of Help Wanted: Female and Crackpots

“Abrams writes sharply and passionately, with a journalist’s skill at laying out compelling facts, and with an artist’s ability to make us experience this life with her.”
Meredith Sue Willis, author of Out of the Mountains: Appalachian Stories