the Girl from Blue Ridge Mountains

The Girl from the Blue Ridge Mountains is based on the early life of MargaretHamilton Riggs, a Virginian neglected and abused as a child, who was rescuedby her grandparents to live an impoverished but joyful life until she met herabusive husband, who tried to kill her. All of the prime characters were realpeople, and the major events in the book are true. Margaret was the grandmotherof Lisa Anne Turner's good friend, Twila Brewer. Turner and Brewer workedtogether as 911 emergency operators, often sitting side by side. Brewer assembledmore than eighty pages of notes and anecdotes written by her mother, EllaMae Riggs Lenz, about her life and the tremulous journey she and her motherMargaret; along with her little brother Andrew Jackson Riggs (aka AJ), madefrom Virginia to Arizona. The notes detailed Margaret's desperate e orts tofree her innocent brother from jail, her bewildering weeks-long detainmentby the FBI, which erroneously thought they had snagged the girlfriend ofPretty Boy Flloyd, and her near drowning at the hands of her husband. Turnerexpanded from the foundation of those notes to create The Girl from the BlueRidge Mountains, a novel built from historical fact. The Girl from the Blue RidgeMountains is an authentic piece of Americana, showing that the bravest of uscan salvage meaning from the cruelest circumstances, and survive to prosperand embrace joy.

Pagina's: 280, Paperback, Archway Publishing