This is the official description of this book on the official website of the editor, Thomas Burton, who is the author or editor of roughly a half dozen other Appalachian books.
"Rosie Hicks is the deceased widow of Ray Hicks, the internationally known traditional storyteller from North Carolina. She lived in the shadows of all the publications and publicity of Ray; nevertheless, she is an interesting person in her own right. Her life is an engaging story, both as an individual and as a representative of a culture that has for the most part passed away. And that story is told in this little book directly from a series of recorded interviews by Donnie Shedlarz. The book focuses on Rosie’s wonderful anecdotes of growing up in Beech Mountain, North Carolina, including her marriage to Ray; but it also includes the recipes that she kept in an old recipe book, as well as a number of family photographs." Thomas Burton Website
The person who conducted the oral history interviews on which this book is based was Donnie Henderson Shedlarz who died of some unnamed lung ailment and asked Thomas Burton, before her death, to finish the work on this little book. Thomas Burton transcribed the interviews of Ms. Shedlarz and edited the book which was published by Landa Books in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I am unable to locate an internet website for Landa Books and have to assume that it is no longer functioning or was a purely personal project of Thomas Burton or someone else associated with Ms. Shedlarz. This book was produced in what must have been a self-publishing, or vanity press, effort and is quite difficult to locate. I have previously read three others of Thomas Burton's books including one called "Beech Mountain Man" which is an oral history biography of Ronda Lee Hicks, a nephew of Ray and Rosie Hicks who was quite a reprobate in his own right. Burton had a long standing friendship with several members of the Hicks family and it is not surprising that he would have volunteered to complete the work which Shedlarz, a mutual friend of Rosie Hicks and Burton, had begun. Shedlarz and Rosie Hicks had become friends during contacts they initially made at story telling festivals around the country where both appeared at times along with Ray Hicks.
This book is small, brief, and that is its greatest shortcoming. Rosie Hicks was a fascinating Appalachian woman from a different era, having been born in 1931 in an isolated portion of Western North Carolina where she spent her entire life. She was a teenager when she married her husband Ray Hicks, who eventually became the most famous Appalachian story teller. Rosie eventually, because of traveling to story telling festivals with her husband, developed a minor reputation as a story teller also. But this book does not focus on her story telling although it does contain two brief stories from her repertoire which I will discuss briefly below. The book is purely an oral history memoir with a sizeable collection of Hicks family photographs and photos of the index card pages of Rosie's personal recipe book. The text portion of the book is only about twenty-five pages and the entire book is only sixty-one pages. But it is well worth reading if you can locate a copy. Burton did a creditable job of sticking to her unique dialect in his transcriptions and the book can shed some light on a few aspects of Appalachian dialect in Western North Carolina.
There are several old Appalachian folk sayings and riddles in the book along with two short Appalachian Folk Tales from Rosie Hicks' collection. One is called "Gallymanders" and the other is called "Mule Eggs". Both are variants of common themes among the folk tales of Appalachia. I do not pretend to be an expert on Appalachian Folk Tales but I have read and written about one of Leonard Roberts' books of folk tales. Roberts is considered the best known expert in that area although he has now been dead nearly forty years. I have to admit that I should read and write further about this important aspect of Appalachian Culture. For those of you who have had no experience with Appalachian Folk Tales, these two in Rosie's book are a good place to start. The book also has a sizeable collection of traditional Appalachian riddles. Although my wife and I have not tried any of Rosie's recipes yet, some of them are worth examining including her Black Magic Cake, Prune Sour Cream Coffee Cake, and Stack Cake. If you can find a copy of this book, I think there are aspects of it all of you can enjoy.
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