Come Go Home with Me (1 of 2 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Come Go Home with Me by Sheila Kay Adams. Copyright 1995 by the University of North Carolina Press.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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COME GO HOME WITH ME

Stories by Sheila Kay Adams

Foreword by Lee Smith

This book is lovingly dedicated to my children, Melanie Michelle Rice, Hart Adams Barnhill, and Andrew Taylor Barnhill. They are my reasons...


FOREWORD
http://www.dailylit.com/books/come-go-home-with-me/foreword


PREFACE

Folks in Sodom used to say, “Come go home with me.” In the following stories, I am inviting you to do just that.

Sodom is a community located in the mountains of western North Carolina. The main valley forks off into three coves—the Ben Cove, the Burton Cove, and the Rice Cove. From the highest ridge tops you can see all the way to the Great Smokies of Tennessee. You also get a feeling of how closed in the community is as you look out at the mountains rolling and tumbling away off into the hazy blue folds that make up the Blue Ridge Mountain chain. It is a beautiful place, my Sodom.

Sodom got its name back during the Civil War. The story goes that there was a regiment of Confederate soldiers camped down around Hot Springs and a Union regiment camped right over the line in Tennessee. Right where Sodom is located, there resided a band of prostitutes that “serviced” both regiments. A circuit-riding Baptist preacher came through the area and held a revival. He commented from the pulpit that there was more sinning went on in that little community than went on in Sodom in the Bible. The War ended, the prostitutes moved on, but the name stuck.

As with most places, what made Sodom special was its people. The first settlers came there in the late 1700s. They were mostly Scots-Irish—fiercely independent, hardworking, hard-drinking, quick to anger and to fight folks. The reason they were called Scots-Irish is because they came here from Scotland by way of Northern Ireland, where they had moved and later had been persecuted by the English. They came full of hope for a better life, and they found it here in the mountains. They lived pretty much to themselves until the English and Germans came seeking a place to raise their families in peace. The English and Germans married into the families of the Scots-Irish, and now it’s impossible to find a single person that doesn’t claim roots with all three nationalities.

This book is a journey. Often during the trip I found myself homesick for the place and the people of my childhood. I recalled the beloved faces and familiar voices so clearly in my memory that I dreamed of them at night. I would wake with that childhood anticipation we all have experienced, only to realize that Sodom was gone. It existed only in the pages of this book. So, in a way, I hate to finish with these writings. By sharing them with you, maybe the people that populate my dreams can find a place in your heart, too.

This book is dedicated to my three children. It’s only fitting. See, as I would put them in bed at night when they were small and lean down to kiss them good night, one or the other would say, “Mama, tell us a story about when you were a little girl growing up in Sodom.” It had to be a different story every night. I really had to do some remembering. And then they began to ask for favorites. So the stories began to develop into what you will be reading. My daughter, Melanie, who is twenty-three now, says it was through these stories that she began to learn about herself. I agree. I feel as strongly now as I did back then—it is only through our past that we can prepare ourselves for the future.

So, thank you for coming. Welcome to Sodom.

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