"An Appalachian Eulogy" by B. Camp

The author of this book is actually Dr. Dennis Campbell, M. D. who chose to publish under a pen name despite having also chosen, at some point, to make no secret of his real identity. Dr. Campbell and I worked together in both our previous careers. He is a retired psychiatrist and I am a retired mental health and addictions therapist. We worked together for about 3/12 years in a community mental health facility in a small county in Eastern Kentucky. We also grew up in the same equally small county about fifty miles from where we actually met at work. We have remained as friends ever since working together. Dr. Campbell has now written and published somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen fiction books in several different categories and all are available on Amazon under the pen name B. Camp. I have previously written on this blog about two of his other books, "Tales From The Red River Gorge" which he cowrote with his wife who writes under the pen name Maribeth Wagner, and "Aaron Subject Number Seven". "An Appalachian Eulogy" is the most purely Appalachian book of the three in my opinion, although both of the others have settings and some characters who are Appalachian. "An Appalachian Eulogy" begins about 1825 and ends about 1975. It tells a story of a blended family in which the parents Able and Elizabeth Horn who have one biological daughter, Emily. As the book begins, their nephew Zeke is in East Tennessee living with an unrelated family who have taken him in after his parents and only brother have died of a plague. This family has written a letter who the Horns who are the brother and sister-in-law of Zeke's father. Able travels to East Tennessee in the late winter to early spring and brings Zeke back to his home which is a hillside farm on Beaver Creek in Knott County Kentucky which happens to be the creek on which I grew up. While some of the place names in the book are fictitious, most of them are actual place names still in use today in the area of the novel. The place on Beaver Creek where the Horn farm is located is about 3 or 4 miles from where I grew up. On their way to Beaver Creek from East Tennessee, they stop in a town in Tennessee for more supplies for their horseback trip and Zeke is allowed to spend some time alone seeing the sights of the town. He strays into a scene in which a group of boys are harrassing a young homeless orphan girl and rescues her from their attack. Able agrees to take the girl, Emma, along with them to his home if the local authorities agree to it. He finds the Tennessee sheriff who allows him to do just that. The three then complete the trip to Beaver Creek where both Zeke and Emma become members of the Horn family. Emma who can't remember the last name of her parents assumes the Horn name which, as odd as it might sound in today's world, was not an uncommon event in the early 19th century in the Appalachian Mountains. It was fairly common at that time for kindly, or soemetimes unkindly, non-relatives to informally adopt orphans and raise them under the family name. The three children, one biological and two informally adopted, quickly become known simply as a family, the Horn family. They live a lifestyle which was common on hillside farms in Eastern Kentucky in that time frame and learn all the chores and requirements of living a self sufficient life in the mountains. Zeke grows up to be a bright, ambitious young man and attends Alice Lloyds, Caney Creek Community Center until he graduates from high school. He then matriculates to Caney Junior College on the same campus and now known as Alice Lloyd College. Eventually, the adopted daughter Emily leaves home to marry a coal miner and live an itinerant life with her growing family in a number of mountain coal camp towns. She dies young and leaves a letter in a family Bible directing her daughter to keep it unopened until she locates another member of the Horn family from whom she has become lost due to her multiple moves from coal camp to coal camp. I won't spoil the ending. You can find the book on Amazon. If you are a fan of Appalachian fiction, the book is worth reading.

"Aaron Subject Number Seven" by B. Camp & Maribeth Wagner

The authors of this book are actually Dr. Dennis Campbell, M. D., and his wife who chose to publish under pen names despite having also chosen, at some point, to make no secret of their real identities. Dr. Campbell and I worked together in both our previous careers. He is a retired psychiatrist and I am a retired mental health and addictions therapist. We worked together for about 3/12 years in a community mental health facility in a small county in Eastern Kentucky. We also grew up in the same equally small county about fifty miles from where we actually met at work. We have remained as friends ever since. Dr. Campbell has now written and published somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen fiction books in several different categories and all are available on Amazon under the pen name B. Camp. This book is actually part of a series of novels which can be bought separately or in a compilation of the lot of the them in one volume. The title character in this book is Aaron, a young boy who is one of a sizeable number of subjects in a dystopian research project by a nefarious and somewhat murkily described company known as The Conglomerate. The company has set out on a mission to genetically engineer a group of superhumans for some murky, but destructive, mission in the future. The subjects are the biological children of carefully chosen men and women whose mental and physical capabilities are well above those of the average human. But the children have also been genetically altered to increase all their physical and mental assets, raised in a deeply secretive group of corporate locations, and taught and trained in a manner to multiply their abilities. Aaron is stolen or rescued by a couple who are both employees of the company at about the age of 8 or 9, and transported to a secretive property which they own in Knott County Kentucky (the county where Dr. Campbell and I grew up). The family which has been created by this removal of Aaron from the company now go totally off the grid, and out of the easy access of the company. The father in this family is a retired Navy Seal and works to train Aaron in much the same way he would have trained a future seal. His wife is an educator and also feeds Aaron's superhuman intellect with a knowledge base which covers the length and breadth of human knowledge and experience. He progresses rapidly, almost too rapidly to be believed, and at the age of thirteen can be mistaken for a well developed adult male with the intellectual and military skills to be a formidable enemy to anyone or anything he wishes to destroy. His quasi-parents have also managed, with their exceptional computer skills, to divert and hide massive amounts of money from the company's bank accounts prior to thier disappearance with Aaron. Aaron sets out at the age of thirteen posing as an adult male to wage a well planned and effective war against the company. I won't spoil the ending for you. If you are a fan of dystopian fiction, you are likely to enjoy this book. If you ask me if I believe that such an effort could be underway in the world today, I would be forced to say that I do believe it is possible. It is even possible in more than one country, location, or setting. I do believe that the Russian or Chinese military could be doing such a thing today. I also believe that any one of a sizeable group of the ultrawealthy such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and perhaps a dozen others of those ultrarich are both financially capable of this type of attack on humanity, and several of them, especially Musk, are also morally destitute enough to try to build such a force and use it in an attempt to control the world. Megalomania is both present in some of these people, and so is their self aggrandizing psycholocal makeup such that they could be doing this very thing even as we discuss it.