Amy Greene

Amy Greene's books include 2014's Long Man.

From her Q & A with Annasue McCleave Wilson for Publishers Weekly:

The major event in this novel is a cataclysmic, man-made flood in East Tennessee in 1936, resulting from a TVA hydroelectric dam project. You grew up in the region and still live there—did any of your forebears experience this historical incident?

My family’s 40-acre farm was spared by the floodwaters, but Cherokee Lake [the lake created by the dam], which inundates our part of the valley, is less than 10 miles from the house my grandfather built. When the water is low in winter, you can see the beginnings of roads leading to the town underneath. As a child, I was fascinated by the silos rising from the middle of the lake. When I started doing research for the novel, I learned land that had been in families for generations was lost underwater. The bones of loved ones were disinterred [from graveyards covered by floodwaters] and moved, and thousands of families were displaced. It was easy to imagine the heartbreak Roosevelt’s New Deal caused during the 1930s, but for my own family, it was a blessing. Before, people here were starving and...[read on]

Visit Amy Greene's website.

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