Allegiance by Gurney Norman

It is well-known that Gurney Norman is a legendary figure in Appalachian life and literature. Now well into his 80s yet still teaching creative writing full-time at the University of Kentucky, he experienced both a traditional and an unusual childhood in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky and Southwestern Virginia. After graduating from the University of Kentucky in 1960, he received a Stegner Fellowship to study at Stanford University, then reported for the Hazard Herald in the middle1960s. His novel, Divine Right’s Trip (1972), first published in the Last Whole Earth Catalog and then as a hardback and mass market paperback, turned America’s Westward Movement literature around as it chronicled the return of Eastern Kentucky hippies from California back to Kentucky.  It was followed five years later by Kinfolks, The Wilgus Stories, which still stands as arguably the best fictional portrayal of mountain life in the early ‘70s. He has been teaching at UK since 1979 and was Kentucky Poet-L