Phases of Life Where the Galax Grows

by Mary N. Carter, Perry Vayo (Editor)

Overview

Part oral history, part romance novel, part social commentary, Phases of Life Where the Galax Grows is an engaging and enlightening collection of first-person accounts of the daily lives of the people living amongst the hills and hollows near the author’s home in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.  Written at the end of the 19th century by Mary Nelson Carter, and originally published in 1900 as part of a series about the old south, this updated “Phases of Life Where the Galax Grows” presents a unique picture of the war years, as remembered by the residents of the mountains around Blowing Rock, North Carolina.  Describing life in that area, from the Civil War to the closing of the 19th century, the book is a unique historical record of the personal toll of the war on the folks back home, and a window into the culture of Appalachia that existed at that time, and the central role played by women.

This new edition has been enhanced with original photographs by the author.  These historical images were taken of the people and places of the book, and were part of Mary Nelson Carters personal references when writing "Phases of Life Where the Galax Grows."  These images add a new dimension of depth to the book.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940015844030
Publisher:	Infonouveau
Publication date:	05/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Mary Nelson Carter was not always a “southern writer” as advertised by her original publisher. She was a Northerner from a family of New England Yankees. The daughter of a well-heeled merchant captain from Nantucket and an Irish mother, the family lived in New York City, and later Fairfield, Connecticut. Their historic pre-Revolution home is one of the few buildings in Fairfield to survive the war, and is still standing today.

In 1863 she married a New Yorker, Charles Carter, at All Saint’s Church, in New York City. He had served as a doctor in the union army, and they were married while the Civil war still raged. After the war they relocated to the Philadelphia area where Charles began a medical practice. It was from there that their life-long love of the mountains of North Carolina began. After making several extended trips to that area, they fell in love with the people and the culture of the mountains around Blowing Rock. Finally, due to an epidemic that hit the area in the 1880s they decided that his skills as a physician were needed by the folks of Blowing Rock, more than by the people of Philadelphia, so, Blowing Rock became their new home. Mary died there in 1908, ten years after her husband.

Mary Carter and her husband are both remembered in Blowing Rock for their contributions to the community. In Mary’s case it was her long work fighting illiteracy in the region, and the establishment of a free library, in a building they built right on the lawn beside their house, that secured her place in the town’s history. Her “Lend-A-Hand Library" which she started, working with Reverend William Savage, the Episcopal minister in Blowing Rock, slowly grew over the years, until, in 1928, long after her death, it became the Blowing Rock Community and School Library.

Her only known work to date, North Carolina Sketches: Phases of Life Where the Galax Grows was published in 1900. It was originally released a part of a three-part series of books about local cultures of the south. It will be joined, later in 2012, by a previously unknown work, begun by her, but not completed before her death.

Editorial Reviews

It's a good time to enjoy an inspiring book - an inspiring testimonial to the human spirit. The
characters are real. The interviewer is real. As I read this book, I not only read it, I lived it
as if I were the one having the conversation. As the story unfolds, it does not come from a
place of anger but a calm understanding as each speak from their heart of matters that were
painful to speak of before. It brings a deeper understanding that our greatest pain can also be &l

Lois Cox