Books Set in Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington DC

Book Summary

This slice-of-life story opens in 1959 when the Garrett family from Baltimore takes their first and last family vacation. Mercy is more passionate about painting than being a good housewife, their teen daughters can’t see eye to eye on anything, and their son (the youngest of their kids) is already planning ways to escape his family’s orbit.

French Braid follows this quirky family across the decades up to and through the pandemic. Over the years, we see their lives progress from several different characters’ points of view. Through this beautifully written novel, Tyler uses the Garrett family to examine the nature of time and memory. She illustrates how cultural expectations of women have progressed over the years, and she explores the consequences of both actions and inactions. You won’t always like all of the characters in this novel, but they are so well drawn that you’ll understand them even when you disagree with their choices.

Book Summary

Journalist Anders thought he’d be further ahead in his career than writing fluff pieces for a small-town newspaper. His latest boring assignment is traveling to remote Frick Island to cover their annual Cake Walk fundraiser. However, when he arrives, he learns that the entire town is pretending to see and interact with Piper Parrish’s dead husband, Tom.

When Tom’s crab boat capsized, his body wasn’t found, which triggered Piper to continue living as if he were still alive. She walks him to the dock every morning and attends their standing Friday night dinner date at the One-Eyed Crab every week. More peculiar, the townspeople just go along with Piper.

Anders believes this story is exactly what he needs to turn his podcast side project into a successful career. He returns to Frick Island for more research and time with Piper, but has no idea he is about to upend many lives, including his own.

Book Summary

Fourteen-year-old Joan spends her childhood on the family farm in Pennslyvania, and her mother encourages her education. However, after her mother’s death, her father insists she earn her keep and work on the farm instead. And perhaps even worse – he burned her books.

Instead of breaking under her father’s harsh rule, Joan finds a job as a parlor maid in a Baltimore, Maryland society household. Now, she earns six dollars a week and can dream of a better future. But this is tricky as she must learn how to fit in with the Jewish family and their older maid.

Book Summary

Book Lovers is about a literary agent named Nora. When Nora’s younger sister, Libby, begs her to take a month-long summer trip to a small town in North Carolina, she envisions all the possible romance novel tropes that could happen in her own life. Why couldn’t she run into a handsome country doctor and find her happily ever after?

Instead, Nora runs into Charlie, a brooding editor she has encountered several times back in the city. While neither of them is the ideal heroine or hero, they kept being thrown together in unlikely situations and must confront the stories they’d told themselves about who they are.

Book Summary

On the surface, Bright Leaf North Carolina seems like a technicolor paradise. When Maddie Sykes arrives in this tobacco capital to assist in her aunt’s sewing business, she’s overwhelmed by the beauty and wealth of the region. War rations and shortages are clearly behind them.

However, when Maddie unexpectedly becomes the lead dressmaker, she’s soon spending time with the town’s most influential women. Although she assumes these wealthy ladies have it all, the truth is bleaker. Many are hiding struggles with their health. Could those struggles be related?

Book Summary

Head back to 1960s North Carolina for another coming-of-age tale. Jessie is 16 and wants no part in her family legacy – the business of moonshine. She believes that moonshine is the reason her mother died when she was four, but her dad refuses to talk about it.

Jessie’s desire for the truth turns into looking for control in other places – like food. As an eating disorder flourishes, Jessie comes up with a scheme to eliminate the moonshine stills, which accidentally brings old rivalries and grudges back to life.

Book Summary

In the Shaker Heights suburb of Ohio, the life of the picture-perfect Richardson family becomes intertwined with the lives of Mia and her daughter Pearl, who rent a house from the Richardsons when they arrive in town.

All four of the Richardson children befriend Pearl and are drawn in by artist Mia. As their relationships become more intertwined, the bonds that tie them together will ultimately unravel both families.

This story is about complex family dynamics, small-town politics, and white privilege. When a local family adopts a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle divides the town, with Mrs. Richardson and Mia on opposite sides. Mrs. Richardson becomes suspicious of Mia’s motives and digs into her past. The secrets she uncovers will change everything.

Book Summary

After escaping an abusive relationship with nothing other than her two-month-old baby and the van she grew up in, Vega needs a place to disappear. Her mother had spoken of a small Ohio town where she once lived, so Vega decides it might be the ideal place to lie low. She might even learn more about her mother’s past while she’s there.

When she arrives in Crystal, Ohio, she quickly befriends several locals. Heff is a young deputy who enjoys his yard art more than policing. And Eve is a farmer who had an unusual near-death experience. But as welcome as they make Vega feel, she still senses something unsettling. There’s talk of a tragedy in the woods years ago, and Vega soon discovers that she’s connected to the mystery.

Book Summary

Betty is the 6th of 8 siblings, born in a bathtub to a Cherokee father and white mother in 1954. The abundant nature in the Appalachian foothills provides comfort as she struggles with poverty and violence both inside and outside her home.

As she grows up, Betty has a continued curiosity about the natural world and a fierce love for her sisters. To cope with all she has witnessed, she discovers the power of writing down her family’s past and present. This lyrical coming-of-age story is told in first person by Betty as she refuses to give up on the beauty in life no matter what she endures.

Book Summary

This is a modern retelling of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield. Like Copperfield, Copperhead examines institutional poverty, but in contemporary Appalachia.

Born to a teenage single mother, Damon (soon to be known as Demon) braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, opioid addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.

Book Summary

As the light-skinned daughter of a plantation owner and a slave, Pheby escaped much of the brutality of slavery as a child. Her white father even promised her freedom for her 18th birthday. However, instead of freedom, she is sent to Devil’s Half-Acre by her father’s wife. This jail is where slaves are broken, tortured, and sold every day.

Within the jail, Pheby was groomed to be the personal mistress of slave trader Rubin Lapier. She becomes his sex slave, “wife,” and the mother of his children. Eventually, she faces the ultimate sacrifice to protect her heart as she fights for freedom.

Book Summary

Sallie Kincaid’s father, Duke, was the biggest man in their small Virginia town at the turn of the 20th century – both literally and figuratively. Sallie was Daddy’s little girl. She has few memories of her mother, who died when she was young. By the time she is 8 years old, her father has remarried and has a new son, Eddie. But this shy, timid son is nothing like Duke. Sallie takes it upon herself to teach Eddie to be more like their outgoing, daredevil father. But an accident occurs, and Sallie is cast out.

Nine years later, Sallie has returned to her hometown to reclaim her place in the family. But the world is a very different place now that Prohibition is the law of the land. After confronting the secrets and scandals she left behind, she finds her own calling as a bootlegger.

Book Summary

Patience Murphy is an Appalachian midwife during the Depression. She has to fight against disease, poverty, prejudices, and her past as she works to safely bring new life into the world. Initially, Patience must take the hardest jobs that no one else wants to gain community trust. Her patients are those most in need, but least likely to pay.

Outside of her midwifery, Patience encounters the horrors of coal mining, the Labor movement’s Union Wars, and the Klu Klux Klan.

Book Summary

In 1908, Dorothy is bored by her socialite life, but the annual summer trips to the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia are a bright spot in her otherwise beige existence. The Greenbriar is also where Dorothy unexpectedly falls in love with an Italian racecar driver. Her family, however, has other plans for her – plans that seem even more dull after her taste of passion and adventure.

Thirty-eight years later, as WWII comes to an end, Dorothy’s life looks nothing like the one her family mapped out for her. She’s divorced and a successful career woman, having established America’s first interior design firm. She’s now ready to tackle her dream assignment – restoring the famed Greenbrier Resort to its former glory. She’s dreaming up daring, unconventional ideas that she believes will make it even greater than before.

Book Summary

Winnie and her Granny run Smythe Orchards on twenty-five acres in rural West Virginia. While the scenery is picturesque, their finances are struggling. Winnie plans the First Annual Christmas at the Orchard in an attempt to keep the business afloat another year!

Apple-picking locals and cider-loving tourists are embracing the event…until Granny’s long-time nemesis, Nadine, is found dead in the apple press. Winnie needs to figure out what really happened before Granny is arrested or the murderer strikes again.

Book Summary

Washington D.C. philanthropist Sloane Chase and Senator Whit Montgomery lost their spouses in a tragedy two years ago. They were drawn together in the aftermath and have now married.

Sloane was diagnosed with lupus in her twenties, and now needs a hip replacement. To support her recovery amidst their crazy schedules, they hired Athena to be a home health aide. Athena is soon involved with more than medical needs, even assisting with Sloane’s charitable foundation.

Instead of healing, Sloane seems to be getting more sick. As she declines, she starts to become paranoid – why is Athena asking so many questions? Is she who she says? Are Whit and Athena really exchanging sultry glances with each other right in front of her?

Book Summary

Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice was thrust into the national spotlight at 17 years old when her dad became President in 1901. Her public position didn’t slow her bold personality – she was known for her rebellious gum-chewing, cigarette-smoking, and poker-playing.

Alice quickly learned that she could use her celebrity for political advantage as she used her outspoken and witty nature to influence Congressmen. Her presence on Capital Hill led to romantic entanglements, but she was never overshadowed by the men in her life.

This biographical historical fiction highlights an incredible woman who lived life to the fullest and refused to conform.

Book Summary

House of Eve alternates perspectives of our main characters in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Ruby’s story is told in first person perspective as she tries to become the first person in her lower-income family to attend higher education. However, her plans are threatened when she begins to fall for a Jewish boy.

Eleanor’s story is told from the third person perspective as she arrives in D.C. with equal parts ambition and secrets. Like Ruby, Eleanor’s plans are changed when she falls for a man, William, at Howard University. William is from one of Washington’s elite wealthy Black families, and his parents are picky about who is good enough to join them.

While this setup feels like a romance novel, this is a fast-moving historical fiction novel that will take you into a piece of history you may know little about. Don’t miss the author’s note at the end!