Richard Snodgrass

At the beginning of World War I, John Lincoln Lyle, the son of a prominent family in his hometown of Furnass, PA, fell from a troop ship in New York Harbor; though it was thought he drowned, he actually survived but suffered hideous injuries to his face when struck by a ship's propeller. As a result he must wear a mask in public, both for the protection of his wounds and to spare others the sight of his grotesque injuries. Now, twenty years later, he has returned unannounced to his hometown. His reasons are unclear though he makes inquiries about his twin sister, Mary Lydia, who was pregnant at the time he left, and his older stepbrother Gus, who inherited the family business, the Keystone Steam Works. Along the way, John Lincoln befriends Anna, the woman who owns the restaurant in the hotel where he is staying. When a young engineer, Daniel, who was embezzling the Steam Works, is found dead in an alley, suspicion falls both on Gus and on his son, Mal, each one who has motive and opportunity. The resolution sees the end of a proud family as well as a new beginning for John Lincoln.At the beginning of World War I, John Lincoln Lyle, the son of a prominent family in his hometown of Furnass, PA, fell from a troop ship in New York Harbor; though it was thought he drowned, he actually survived but suffered hideous injuries to his face when struck by a ship's propeller. As a result he must wear a mask in public, both for the protection of his wounds and to spare others the sight of his grotesque injuries. Now, twenty years later, he has returned unannounced to his hometown. His reasons are unclear though he makes inquiries about his twin sister, Mary Lydia, who was pregnant at the time he left, and his older stepbrother Gus, who inherited the family business, the Keystone Steam Works. Along the way, John Lincoln befriends Anna, the woman who owns the restaurant in the hotel where he is staying. When a young engineer, Daniel, who was embezzling the Steam Works, is found dead in an alley, suspicion falls both on Gus and on his son, Mal, each one who has motive and opportunity. The resolution sees the end of a proud family as well as a new beginning for John Lincoln.

It's 1914, and the Lyle family, like the United States itself, is at a crossroads. Malcolm Lyle, all too aware that he is no engineering genius like his father who founded the company, has made the Keystone Steam Works internationally known through his abilities in marketing and adapting his father's ideas. Now he must decide whether to devote the company's resources to a lucrative government war project, or to back his son, Augustus, who is an even worse engineer than Malcolm, in the development of the ill-fated steam-powered Lylemobile. Meanwhile, he learns that his youngest son, John Lincoln, has gone off unannounced to join a multinational effort to fight the Kaiser's invasion of Europe, at the same time that the boy's unmarried twin sister, Mary Lydia, turns out to be pregnant. Malcolm's wife, Missy, is no help with his dilemmas, content to spend her days dressed in peignoirs and lying around on the living room sofa reading women's magazines and eating bonbons. His eighty-nine-year-old Mother, Libby, the steely matriarch of the Lyle clan, watches Malcolm's every move with what he believes is an unapproving eye. Then there is Libby's Caribbean maid, Perpetual, an impenetrable figure with a room full of medicinal plants and an indelible, irrepressible spirit, who has inadvertently become the axis around whom the Lyle household revolves.It's 1914, and the Lyle family, like the United States itself, is at a crossroads. Malcolm Lyle, no engineering genius like his father, Colin, who founded the Keystone Steam Works, must decide whether to devote the company's resources to a lucrative war project, or to back his son, Augustus, in the development of the steam-powered Lylemobile. Meanwhile, he learns that his youngest son, John Lincoln, has gone off unannounced to join a multinational effort to fight the Kaiser's invasion of Europe, and that the boy's unmarried twin sister, Mary Lydia, is pregnant. His wife, Missy, is no help, content to lie around in her peignoirs reading women's magazines and eating bonbons. His steely eighty-nine-year-old Mother, Libby, watches Malcolm with what he believes is an unapproving eye. Then there is Libby's Caribbean maid, Perpetual, an impenetrable figure with a room full of medicinal plants and an indelible, irrepressible spirit, who has become the axis around whom the Lyle household revolves.

It's 1914, and the Lyle family, like the United States itself, is at a crossroads. Malcolm Lyle, all too aware that he is no engineering genius like his father who founded the company, has made the Keystone Steam Works internationally known through his abilities in marketing and adapting his father's ideas. Now he must decide whether to devote the company's resources to a lucrative government war project, or to back his son, Augustus, who is an even worse engineer than Malcolm, in the development of the ill-fated steam-powered Lylemobile. Meanwhile, he learns that his youngest son, John Lincoln, has gone off unannounced to join a multinational effort to fight the Kaiser's invasion of Europe, at the same time that the boy's unmarried twin sister, Mary Lydia, turns out to be pregnant. Malcolm's wife, Missy, is no help with his dilemmas, content to spend her days dressed in peignoirs and lying around on the living room sofa reading women's magazines and eating bonbons. His eighty-nine-year-old Mother, Libby, the steely matriarch of the Lyle clan, watches Malcolm's every move with what he believes is an unapproving eye. Then there is Libby's Caribbean maid, Perpetual, an impenetrable figure with a room full of medicinal plants and an indelible, irrepressible spirit, who has inadvertently become the axis around whom the Lyle household revolves.It's 1914, and the Lyle family, like the United States itself, is at a crossroads. Malcolm Lyle, no engineering genius like his father, Colin, who founded the Keystone Steam Works, must decide whether to devote the company's resources to a lucrative war project, or to back his son, Augustus, in the development of the steam-powered Lylemobile. Meanwhile, he learns that his youngest son, John Lincoln, has gone off unannounced to join a multinational effort to fight the Kaiser's invasion of Europe, and that the boy's unmarried twin sister, Mary Lydia, is pregnant. His wife, Missy, is no help, content to lie around in her peignoirs reading women's magazines and eating bonbons. His steely eighty-nine-year-old Mother, Libby, watches Malcolm with what he believes is an unapproving eye. Then there is Libby's Caribbean maid, Perpetual, an impenetrable figure with a room full of medicinal plants and an indelible, irrepressible spirit, who has become the axis around whom the Lyle household revolves.

Beyond the valley's hills that define the mill town of Furnass is another world. A world of rolling hills and fields of wheat and oats and corn. A world of isolated farmhouses keeping company only with their barns and outbuildings. A world of open vistas and skies that go for miles even on a gray day. A world where the land if left untended goes quickly back to forest where the wild things are. At times the life of the farmlands intersects with the life of the town-at the supermarkets and superstores in the shopping malls, at the shops and restaurants and dealerships along the streets of Furnass. But soon enough the people of the farmlands return home to where they're known and understood. Proud of who they are, and who they are not.FURROW AND SLICE is a book of short short stories and attending photographs-some of the stories standing their own, others as chapters in larger works-portraying the people in the farmlands of upper Appalachia. In tracing the seasons of growth and decay, planting and harvesting, reaping and sowing, as found on the farms of Southwestern Pennsylvania, FURROW AND SLICE portrays the spirit of an indelible people and their way of life, and helps flesh out the fictional world of the Books of Furnass

Beyond the valley's hills that define the mill town of Furnass is another world. A world of rolling hills and fields of wheat and oats and corn. A world of isolated farmhouses keeping company only with their barns and outbuildings. A world of open vistas and skies that go for miles even on a gray day. A world where the land if left untended goes quickly back to forest where the wild things are. At times the life of the farmlands intersects with the life of the town-at the supermarkets and superstores in the shopping malls, at the shops and restaurants and dealerships along the streets of Furnass. But soon enough the people of the farmlands return home to where they're known and understood. Proud of who they are, and who they are not.FURROW AND SLICE is a book of short short stories and attending photographs-some of the stories standing their own, others as chapters in larger works-portraying the people in the farmlands of upper Appalachia. In tracing the seasons of growth and decay, planting and harvesting, reaping and sowing, as found on the farms of Southwestern Pennsylvania, FURROW AND SLICE portrays the spirit of an indelible people and their way of life, and helps flesh out the fictional world of the Books of Furnass

Shadow of the Valley is a story within a story within a story - an innovative historical novel in three parts that tells the tale of an orderly's day book written at the end of the French and Indian War by an Ensign in the 42nd Royal Highland Regiment of Foot, the Black Watch, the history of what transpired at an outpost on the frontier of an endless wilderness that was America, as well as how the book influenced the lives of those who came to live here afterwards. At the heart of the book is "The Journal of Thomas Keating," the story of a young Scottish Ensign in the Western Pennsylvania wilderness of 1753 leading a band of misfits upriver to find what happened to an outpost's lost command, and how he came later to seek refuge in a blockhouse with a woman in search of her baby's father. It is the story of Duncan, the sole survivor of that Black Watch detachment, a fiddler whose hands were chopped off by Indians, who in 1776 farms the land around the abandoned blockhouse...and the story of the young woman who found Keating's Journal and brings it to Duncan hoping he can help her learn the fate of her mother. And it is the story of two children in 1821, descendants of Duncan, who find the strange book hidden away in the abandoned blockhouse on their father's iron plantation, and use the ancient language in their games to explore their awakening bodies and emotions.

A BOOK OF DAYS is the story of a book, The Journal of Thomas Keating-the days when it was written, and the subsequent days when it changed the lives of those who touched it. We first see the book as a plaything for two children on a Western Pennsylvania iron plantation in the early 1800s, who use the ancient language of the book in their games of sexual awakening. We see the book in the same location in 1776, when a young woman brings the book written in Gaelic to a survivor of a massacre that occurred here, to help her understand the fate of her mother. And we see, at the heart of the novel, the writer of the book, an ensign of the Black Watch, as he seeks refuge in a blockhouse he fears is surrounded by Indians, recounting his journey upriver with a band of misfits to discover the fate of the outpost's lost command.