When I briefly researched to find out what the second book in John Ehle’s Mountain series was, I came up with The Road. However, the end of the novel indicates that one other book precedes it, and Goodreads lists it as #4, the last one. (Looking back, I see I found a site that recommended they be read in that order, with the last one second.) In any case, the novels don’t seem to be closely linked, only featuring the same families.
The Road begins 100 years after The Land Breakers, in 1876. Weatherby Wright, an engineer born and raised in the mountains, has been tasked with building a railroad from the eastern part of North Carolina up the mountains to the Swannanoa Gap. This railroad will help the mountain dwellers take their crops to market and make medical and other kinds of help available to them. However, no one knows if the effort can be successful.
Most of the novel focuses on Wright and the details of this difficult project. He is dependent mostly on convict labor and hires as the project accountant Hal Cumberland. Another plot is the romance between Cumberland and a mountain girl, Henry Anna Plover.
The novel is powerful at times but at other times reads like a series of anecdotes passed down in the family that don’t really link up into a coherent story. The character of Weatherby is not always involved because of health reasons.
What? Me Read? 