Gary D Kessler

Shadow of the Blue Ridge Gary D Kessler

Despite having traveled all over the world in the last fifty years, with extended residences in Japan, Thailand, and Cyprus, the author of this anthology kept coming back, in person and imagination, to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. He met his wife in Charlottesville, where they both attended the University of Virginia, and then, although drifting off in foreign service assignments with the U. S. government, the couple didn't leave central Virginia before buying their own slice of paradise in the Piedmont foothills of the Blue Ridge and returning to the region again and again until finally retiring there. The twenty-six stories in this collection, written over a fifteen-year period, are all set within sight of this range of mountains, located on either side of the mountain chain, and extending from Front Royal in the north to Roanoke in the south. Most have won or placed in regional prose contests or are extracted from published anthologies. All were written with the presence of the Blue Ridge Mountains very much in mind.