Cabins in the Laurel

In 1928 New York native Muriel Earley Sheppard moved with her mining engineer husband to the Toe River Valleyan isolated pocket in North Carolina between the Blue Ridge and Iron Mountains. Sheppard began visiting her neighbors and forming friendships in remote coves and rocky clearings, and in 1935 her account of life in the mountainsCabins in the Laurelwas published. The book included 128 striking photographs by the wellknown Chapel Hill photographer, Bayard Wootten, a frequent visitor to the area.The early reviews of Cabins in the Laurel were overwhelmingly positive, but the mountain peopleSheppards friends and subjectsinitially felt that she had portrayed them as too oldfashioned, even backward. As novelist John Ehle shows in his foreword, though, fifty years have made a huge difference, and the people of the Toe River Valley have been among its most affectionate readers.This new largeformat edition, which makes use of many of Woottens original negatives, will introduce Sheppards words and Woottens photography to a whole new generation of readersin the Valley and beyond.