Running on Red Dog Road: And Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood

Description

Publishers Weekly:  Berkheimer candidly brings her personality to the page in this incredible journey from naivete to wide-eyed maturity.  (April 2016)Library Journal:  Berkheimer's homespun memoir provides a wistful look back at a simpler time. An appealing counterbalance to more dreary war-era accounts.  (May 2016)                                                                                                             "Mining companies piled trash coal in a slag heap and set it ablaze. The coal burned up, but the slate didn't. The heat turned it rose and orange and lavender. The dirt road I lived on was paved with that sharp-edged rock. We called it red dog. Grandma said, Don't you go running on that red dog road. But I do." Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers cavort through Drema's childhood in 1940s Appalachia after her father is killed in the coal mines, her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter, and she is left in the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that reads like a novel, with intrigue, sweeping emotion, and indisputable charm. Drema's coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa, poetry-writing hobos, and exotic carnivals, and through it all, she serves witness to a multi-generational family of saints and sinners whose lives defy the stereotypes. Just as she defies her own.