Capturing the Rhythm of the Mountains

Compliments of FNS

“The bridge ain’t shaking. It’s dancing. You gotta dance with it, girl. Let your feet find the rhythm. If you pay some mind, there’s rhythm nigh on to ev’rything.” …Granny Em in These Healing Hills

An old mountain granny gives Francine, my main character in These Healing Hills this advice while Francine stands frozen on a swinging bridge, afraid to move on across. There’s rhythm nigh on to ev’rything.

That’s perfect advice not only for my character to get across that bridge, but also for me as I follow my story trails up into the Appalachian Mountains for stories. These Healing Hills was the first story I set in the Appalachian area of Kentucky. But since then, I’ve written four more with mountain settings. A Chance for Kallie Mae will be coming out in May.  I wrote this post a few years ago for an online Scavenger Hunt, but since I’ve been sharing about my books, I decided to rewrite it a bit and share it here too. So here goes as I try to keep the rhythm going.

The right rhythm in a song, a dance or a story can make all the difference in the world. When writing a novel, I need to be in tune with the characters, the setting, the history, and what’s happening. Then I have to keep all that in the right rhythm to keep the story flowing along. Sometimes that can be like a canoe ride down a gentle meandering river while other times a crashing flood of water carries the story along toward a thundering falls with seemingly no escape.

I liked settling into that mountain rhythm for These Healing Hills where I mixed the beauty of the mountains with the challenge of life lived on hardscrabble land. My characters hear and feel both notes of disappointment and of joy in their walk along their story paths the same as we all do in real life. The background history of the Frontier Nursing Service added a rhythm of childbirth with the midwives helping the mountain women bring their babies into the world.

The cadence of the mountaineers’ voices and unique expressions such as the edge of dark for night falling gave the dialogue between my characters a rhythm I hoped would make it sound like you just happened up behind them and started eavesdropping.

Since music lives in the hills with plenty of folksongs, a few songs helped along the rhythm of the story. “Froggie Went A-Courting” is an old rhyming song threaded throughout the book right to the end. I even let my midwife nurse, Francine, sing a verse I made up. I’m no songwriter, but with some rhymes and the rhythm of the tune in my head, I think I did okay.

I enjoyed capturing the rhythm of the mountains in These Healing Hills along with the pulse of life a nurse midwife surely feels each and every day. Each person’s life, real or imagined, has its own unique rhythm and that’s what I try to capture each time I put my fingers on my keyboard to share a story. I hope I have caught it again for my upcoming release, A Chance for Kallie Mae. 

Do you agree with Granny Em that there’s rhythm to everything in life if we just take time to listen?

Check back Sunday for a new book giveaway chance.

(My website had some glitches that had to be fixed. So, sorry for any inconveniences while the website was being repaired.)