There are many authors who have written about the people and problems of Appalachia and similar environments who don’t have eugenicists for pen-pals and mentors. Some of them even anchor frank discussions of social problems within moving personal stories. Otis Trotter’s Keeping Heart, a memoir about growing up poor, sick, and Black in Appalachian Ohio springs to mind, as does Rick Bragg’s All Over but the Shoutin’. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is the story of a dysfunctional West Virginian family and finding the courage to leave. Linda Tate, in Power in the Blood, tells of the
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