What the Hollows Remember
The mist rising from Corbin Hollow isn’t just weather; it is the breath of families who once called this place home. To hike the Shenandoah National Park is to travel through a living archive that holds the memory of every orchard it uprooted and every homestead it dismantled. It was this breathing landscape that captured my imagination and ultimately demanded that I tell its story in Enduring Fire.
Completed in the 1930s, the park was considered a triumph of conservation, a pristine sanctuary carved out of the Blue Ridge. But that image of virgin wilderness is an illusion. Over four hundred families living on farms and in thriving rural communities were quietly scrubbed from the map, their land condemned and their homes acquired through eminent domain. Given meager compensation, they were relocated to nondescript government built houses in the surrounding lowlands.
National Park Service interpretive placards showcase glowing descriptions of Civilian Conservation Corps construction alongside photographs that portray the local residents as quaint, simplified caricatures. But the half-buried stone foundations and the crumbling, hollow trunks of stone chimneys alongside the tended trails refuse to endorse the official narrative, forcing the visitor to confront the visceral grief of sudden exile to clear the way for a natural playground. This emotional collision between romantic fiction and stark reality is precisely what inspired my first novel.
Will Everett, the protagonist of Enduring Fire, arrives in Virginia as a detached observer, tasked with documenting the park's creation for the federal government. But the land and the people soon take hold of him — and he becomes a witness and a voice for the displaced.
The Shenandoah National Park, with its rugged trails, sparkling waterfalls and peaceful valley overlooks, is a place I return to often and know well. One cannot walk through it without sensing the ghosts of those who quietly sacrificed for its creation in every ridge, creek bed and hollow. Like an enduring flame no waters can quench, their memory burns on.
