Blue Mountains of Dan by Larry Alderman

Larry Alderman, one of Nashville’s most successful songwriters, became a performer himself, and now an author.  With two books this year, first a memoir, and now this, his first novel, he has turned his way with words and his nostalgia for his Western North Carolina roots into book-length manuscripts. The protagonist of this book, Dan, is fifteen-years-old, and it is 1903. Alderman weaves stories that his grandparents and great-grandparents told him, as well as the history of the region, into this novel set even deeper in the Blue Ridge than Mt. Airy where he grew up. Nashville, Tennessee: self-published, 2020. 192 pages. Trade paperback, 12.99.