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

by Drema Hall Berkheimer

Overview

“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 told me, Don’t you go running on that red dog road. But I do.”

Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers weave 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 traveling 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.

Running On Red Dog Road is proof that truth is stranger than fiction, especially when it comes to life and faith in an Appalachian childhood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310344964
Publisher:	Zondervan
Publication date:	04/12/2016
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	292,020
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Drema Hall Berkheimer was born in a coal camp in Appalachia, the child of a West Virginia coal miner who was killed in the mines, a Rosie the Riveter mother, and devout Pentecostal grandparents. Her tales of hobnobbing with gypsies, moonshiners, snake handlers, hobos, and faith healers, are published in numerous online and print journals. Excerpts from her memoir, Running On Red Dog Road and Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood, won first place Nonfiction and First Honorable Mention Nonfiction in the 2010 West Virginia Writers competition. She is a member of West Virginia Writers, Salon Quatre, and The Writer’s Garret. A longtime resident of Dallas, she lives with her husband and a neurotic cat that takes after her. Her husband is mostly normal.

Table of Contents

A Note from the Author 13

Prologue: In the Beginning 17

1 I Come from Coal 19

2 Washed in the Blood 23

3 The Color of India Ink 29

4 Strung on Fine Wire 33

5 Forcing the Forsythia 41

6 A Hobo's Prayer 49

7 The Spirit is Willing 57

8 Only the Essence Remained 63

9 Mistook for a Haint 68

10 Most Call Me Tolly 71

11 Survivors Will Be Shot 76

12 A Handful of the Mountain 80

13 Lead a Horse to Water 84

14 A Gizzard on My Fork 92

15 Suffer the Little Children 96

16 The Flesh is Weak 103

17 Ladies Don't Sweat 109

18 Gypsy Skirt 114

19 Birds of a Feather 124

20 The Living and the Deaf 130

21 Lonely Hearts Club Man 139

22 There Be Dragons 151

23 Mr. Parsleys World 158

24 The River Ran Cold 165

25 The Mountain Fell Away 175

26 All the Bells Were Ringing 188

Epilogue: We Are Going Home 197

Acknowledgments 201

Editorial Reviews

Running on Red Dog Road is an American treasure. Echoes of Mark Twain resonate in Ms. Berkheimer’s tales of life in West Virginia in the care of loving and wise grandparents while her widowed mother helps save the world as a Rosie the Riveter. This family is an icon of what we should wish to be. Truly a needed voice in our world.

author of The Narrow Gate Julianne Mc Cullagh

I love this memoir. The voice is masterful. Berkheimer layers into a perceptive child narrator an understated love of her family, a sassy streak that dodges consequences, and a precocious questioning of the society that surrounds her.

Robin Underdahl

A sweet, whimsical, and often touching account of the author’s childhood during a kinder, gentler era. It triggered great nostalgia during my reading.

Dr. William L. Grose

Time and again I have been carried away by these stories, by the observations of a very shrewd little girl of her elders, both wise and the foolish. But don’t let the sly humor fool you. Like the West Virginia coal country Drema Berkheimer writes about so affectionately and beautifully, there is always something going on here just beneath the surface, something grave, firmly rooted, even eternal.

author of The Rock Island Line and (with R. V. Bur Bill Marvel

Every once in a while, a voice comes along that makes you yearn for a childhood you never lived. Author Drema Hall Berkheimer invites you to skip along with her, big sis Vonnie, and best friend Sissy into the coal mining hills and hollers of West Virginia, at a time when gypsies and hobos were as common as doctors who made house calls.

award-winning author of Johnnie Come Lately Kathleen M. Rodgers

A competent historian could get the details right about mid-century Pentecostal Appalachian culture, but only Drema Hall Berkheimer could set us right in the middle of it. Through the eyes of a little girl who doesn’t miss a thing, we experience spicy stew in the gypsy camp, and creative avenues to intoxication, and river baptisms. If the child Drema’s observations could not always be shared with her grandparents, they are now shared with us. That will be to the delight of every reader.

Dr. Douglas M. Gropp

In this gem of a book, Drema digs deep into her memory pool to bring forth images of well-developed places, characters, and things. In this highly technological age, we need this story to understand how ordinary people survived, thrived, and endured.

Njoki Mc Elroy

Running on Red Dog Road took me away to a time and a family that I will never forget. Drema Hall Berkheimer is a masterful, joyful, humorous storyteller who is just getting started. What a great book.

International Speaker and Oprah-featured bestselli Fawn Germer

Drema Hall Berkheimer is a pure storyteller, one of the most wonder- fully gifted I’ve ever read. As they make their way through Running on Red Dog Road, readers will smile continually, laugh out loud occasionally, and turn misty-eyed at times of joy or sadness as this child of Appalachia shares so lovingly her growing-up experiences with her cherished family and friends. Her phrasing is so exquisite and her words so perfectly chosen that her writing is a mixture of prose and poetry. It’s best read in private, so there will be no distractions as the reader travels hand in hand with the author from beginning to end.

Dr. George T. Arnold

In this gem of a book, Drema digs deep into her memory pool to bring forth images of well-developed places, characters, and things. In this highly technological age, we need this story to understand how ordinary people survived, thrived, and endured.

Njoki McElroy

Running on Red Dog Road is an American treasure. Echoes of Mark Twain resonate in Ms. Berkheimer’s tales of life in West Virginia in the care of loving and wise grandparents while her widowed mother helps save the world as a Rosie the Riveter. This family is an icon of what we should wish to be. Truly a needed voice in our world.

author of The Narrow Gate Julianne McCullagh

02/08/2016
In this charming, lyrical memoir of growing up in Appalachia, Berkheimer melds anecdotes and religious explorations to explain her rustic upbringing, which was heavily influenced by a radical Pentecostalism. Berkheimer’s voice is captivating, bringing a vast array of strange but thoughtful characters to life: vagabonds, faith healers, farmers, and miners. When young Berkheimer visits a carnival, she discovers a strange world that’s foreign to her West Virginia childhood. The flow of life becomes clearer when her grandparents die; only then does this innocent girl understand that there is a reality beyond the coal mines and the little Pentecostal church where her grandfather preached every other week. Weaving together recollections from relatives, musings on religious knowledge, and personal stories of enlightenment, Berkheimer candidly brings her personality to the page in this incredible journey from naïveté to wide-eyed maturity. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

05/01/2016
Berkheimer's homespun memoir provides a wistful look back at a simpler time. The author grew up in her grandparents' Beckley, WV, homestead during World War II, her widowed mother working in New York City. Their kind, patient Pentecostalism and folksy brand of "gracious plenty" meant "they had enough to be thankful but not so much as to be uppity." This is not the hardscrabble Appalachia of Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle. For Berkheimer, this memoir is nostalgia. The portraits are lovingly remembered as tent meetings filled with soft hymns, pigtails, and picnics on the ground. Even though it's the 1930s and 1940s, the hobos are pleasant and there is money for paper dolls and occasional vacations. VERDICT Berkheimer's family lives plainly, even frugally, and their experience possesses a purity and easiness that doesn't reflect the crush of Depression-era want. An appealing counterbalance to more dreary war-era accounts.—SC

Library Journal

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