Found fiction

Stories come from any number of sources — family history, overheard conversations and found objects make the list. For author Julia Franks, the tale in her new book, Over the Plain Houses, came at least in part from an old homestead in Marshall.

She and her then-husband purchased a farm in 2008. The property included a house from 1865, abandoned along with its previous inhabitant’s belongings. “The old lady who’d lived there had been a meticulous hoarder. She’d preserved all these items that were meaningful to her: baby clothes, animal bones, locks of hair, bearskins, insect hives,” Franks says in a press release. “One little jar had a scrap of paper in it that read: ‘Fingernail, 1959,Wilson’s truck door.’ And the fingernail was in there too.”

The period story that evolved from Franks’ experience is of Irenie (the wife of the local preacher, Brodis) and Virginia Furman (a USDA agent sent into the mountains). Their friendship is threatened by Brodis, who is suspicious of the government and fears the changes of modern life that find their way into his rural community. The novel, according to a release from Spartanburg, S.C.-based publisher Hub City Press, is “written with a Southern lyricism that will appeal to fans of Ron Rash and Cormac McCarthy.”

In addition to appearing at Blue Ridge Bookfest on Saturday, April 23, Franks will read at Malaprop’s the same day, at 7 p.m. malaprops.com — Alli Marshall