The Google Alert about my 2013 book was intriguing:
- Murder, Mystery and Mayhem Book Club – Meets the last Tuesday of the month at 5:30. We will meet at Slate’s Mercantile at 140 W Pine St., Mt. Airy – January’s selection is “Met Her on the Mountain: The Murder of Nancy Morgan” by Mark I. Pinsky.
The Surry County meeting was in Mt. Airy, N.C., a town that markets itself as the template for Andy Griffith’s idyllic television town of Mayberry, as it was the actor’s home town. As a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and the Orlando Sentinel I had written several stories about Mt. Airy, and knew the town pretty well
( https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-04-19-ca-617-story.html , https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-06-27-fo-1657-story.html )
So, I thought, why not attend – uninvited and unannounced – and listen to what they candidly thought about my book, an updated, trade paper edition of which was published in 2023 by the University of Kentucky Press. The murder took place not far from Mt. Airy, further up the Blue Ridge Mountains in insular and, at the time, isolated, Madison County.
There, in June of 1970, a young, federal anti-poverty worker named Nancy Dean Morgan was kidnapped, raped and murdered. The case, which I followed since the day after her body was found, was never solved ( https://www.theassemblync.com/politics/criminal-justice/nancy-morgan-murder-confession-madison-county-nc/ )
I briefly thought about wearing my author’s uniform, a well-worn, black, corduroy sport jacket, khaki slacks and a blue, button-down shirt, but that would have been too obvious. In any case, when I made the two-hour drive, I arrived with a local friend at Slate’s Mercantile but was disappointed. The charming curiosity shop, located in an old post office and featuring antique and vintage clothing, advertises “Artisans, General Store, Clothing, & So Much More” would not be hosting the event after.
“I love being able to provide this space for them,” said Slate, who also provides coffee and water, as well as hard candies for sore throats.
But at the appointed time, I found the club’s leader, librarian Rana Southern, had cancelled the meeting because of illness. A subsequent meeting was called off because of the inclement weather.
By the time it was rescheduled, in February, I was back at home in Durham and confined to the house by snow and my third round of Covid. So, I arranged for Susie Slate, the shop’s proprietor, to put me on speaker as an out-of-town friend – without identifying me – to listen in.
And so, she did.
Seven women, middle-aged and older, joined Slate in a circle around one of the shop’s comfy back rooms, seated on 1930s ladderback chairs, with seats padded with patchwork sections of old neckties, and an old green velvet sofa covered in a quilt made by Slate’s grandmother. They were led by Southern, who was still recovering from a bout of pneumonia.
For about 40 minutes they had a frank discussion of the book, which was mostly favorable. They had some questions that I had to bite my tongue to avoid answering.
It was a pleasure to hear the accents of people from the region confirm much of what I had written, as an admitted outsider, about mountain culture.
I “solved it,” one of the women said, referring to my conclusion that a local troublemaker and a gang of thugs had kidnapped, raped and murdered Morgan.
The man I said was one of the perpetrators, and who confessed to the crime to me several times, on tape, “should have been shot,” another said. A previous conviction for poisoning his five-year-old daughter in a vain hope of winning back his estranged wife that earned him a life sentence, which he is still serving.
(Yes, at time, Madison County was a lot like “Deliverance” country, complete with skilled banjo pickers and fiddlers.)
Club members knew their true crime, talking about “toxic masculinity,” DNA evidence and the way mountain society demonized women’s behavior during the 1970s, and after. In the book, they noted the retrospective slut shaming of the victim, and how women in the mountains who are sexually assaulted still have trouble being believed, and so often don’t report attacks.
After about 40 minutes, when the conversation seemed to meander from the book, I introduced myself.
“If you could have seen their faces,” Slate told me later. “It was heartwarming.”
Southern agreed.
“I was pleasantly surprised and dismayed that I missed meeting you in person,” she said in a subsequent email.
After saying goodbye and offering to donate a copy of the book to the library, I recounted to my wife what a great experience it had been, congratulating myself for bringing it off.
Never one to be overawed by a puffed-up author, Sallie asked, “What if they didn’t like it? What if they had said negative things about it before you outed yourself?”
Hmm.