The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

"The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" by John Fox, Jr. is a story set in the Appalachian Mountains during the early 1900s, where themes of being alone, clashes between different ways of life, and hard-to-understand relationships play out against the beautiful but tough natural world. A girl named June, filled with curiosity, meets John Hale, a visitor, setting in motion a story filled with twists and turns. As June climbs a mountain, driven by stories of new technology, she spots smoke from a nearby construction site. There, she sees John Hale fishing. The encounter is uneasy, especially when June's watchful father arrives. As the story goes on, we see the hard parts of life in their community, like family arguments, wanting to connect with others, and the new world coming in, which all makes for a complicated journey for the characters.