Backroads 3: Faces of Appalachia

As a young girl growing up along the gold coast of south Florida, Lynn always had a Waldenish bent towards the old ways and longed to live a simplistic lifestyle in the mountains, far from the flatlands of her home state. In 1980 her dream came true when she moved to the tiny hamlet of Love, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Realizing the elderly neighbors living around her and their unique culture was slowly ebbing away, Lynn thought there must be a way to capture the existing Appalachian lifestyle before it disappeared altogether. With no prior experience in journalism, she began publishing a monthly newspaper called Backroads that chronicled the customs and activities of the native mountain people she had grown to love; the people who mentored her and taught her their ways. Backroads carved out a folksy niche, having a twenty-five year run before Lynn retired in 2006. But the mountain people's plea, "Don't let our stories die with your retirement," compelled Lynn to start writing five books about the vanishing and oft-misunderstood people of her area. Faces of Appalachia is the third book in a five-book series about Virginia's mountain people. Lynn is happily married to Billy Coffey, a rugged native of Love, Virginia, who is also a Baptist minister and they continue to live the simple life on their mountain top farm. They have five children, six grandchildren and welcomed their first great-grandchild in December of 2015.

Backroads 3: Faces of Appalachia is the third in a five-book series by Lynn Coffey about the native people of Virginia's highlands and their customs. As with the first two Backroads books, Faces of Appalachia is chock full of old time subject matter such as making apple cider, scrub board washing, cutting winter firewood, gathering watercress, outdoor privies, tapping maple trees for syrup and the demise of the American Chestnut trees, which the mountain people said was "the worst lick the south ever had". Lynn writes the life stories of twenty-four of her close friends living in and around the mountain village of Love where she makes her home, giving new insight into the lives of those inappropriately dubbed "hillbillies" by the media. People like Lizzie Wyant Wood, the plucky little woman who raised nine children and at this writing is almost 111 years of age and still living in her own home, doing her laundry, cooking meals, planting garden and canning the harvest as well as beating anyone who sis down in the evenings to play a hand of Pollyanna. Take a ride with Junior Hatter, a rural mountain mail carrier who still delivers groceries to the older widows on his route or opens a mailbox with a Mason jar of sugar in it with a note, "Take this down to Annie Carr who is baking a cake and needs it". Or marvel at the love between Irvin and Melba Rosen who celebrated their sixty-seventh wedding anniversary and are still busy, active people, full of good humor and a zest for life than many envy.These and many more will entertain readers and give new respect for the rugged folks that call the Blue Ridge Mountains home.