The Fabled Earth by Kimberly Brock
Author Kimberly Brock shares stories of the place that inspired her new book. The Fabled Earth is a sweeping novel of family lore and the power of finding your own voice. Southern mythology and charm collide with personal reckoning in this dual-timeline story of three women connected in different ways to the ghosts and secrets of the past.
As soon as I open my mouth to tell a story, someone will always ask, “Where are you from?” If my accent doesn’t tell you, my stories will.
Appalachia is a region that exists in valleys and hills, shadow and light, low-lying creek bottoms and high-climbing mountain roads made up of treacherous switchbacks. It is a place that seems to be made for burying secrets and growing superstitions, both of which are ever-present in my writing. Fables and wonder tales have always suited me. These are the kinds of stories that have traveled across seas, across generations, carrying truths so universal that they will make themselves at home anywhere they’re told. And they are a language we speak well in the Southern United States.
I grew up in the foothills of North Georgia, hearing traditional folktales and superstitions repeated around campfires, dinner tables, or sleepovers. I knew of the Bell Witch of Tennessee, who would show up disguised as an animal such as a dog or a bird. I heard tales of inexplicable glowing orbs that floated above the ground near Brown Mountain, North Carolina. Everyone I knew could tell you that if you spilled salt, you ought to throw a pinch over your left shoulder so you wouldn’t have bad luck. Or if cows were laying down, or leaves were upside down, it was going to rain. And I still won’t leave a rocking chair rocking. That would invite spirits. Not that spirits would necessarily be a bad thing.
Ghost stories, in fact, were beloved and as familiar as my own childhood memories. Every cemetery had a haunted gravestone, some unfortunate soul who had died too young, or the grieving mother searching for the baby she lost. You might fear them as easily as you’d feel sorry for them. And every empty field had been the site of some battle where the familiar shape of a long-gone soldier could sometimes still be seen walking home. My favorite ghost stories, however, were always the personal ones, stories told by relatives or neighbors about phones that rang moments after a loved one passed, or recollections of mothers who’d inexplicably heard their children cry from miles away when they’d been hurt.
How likely was it that any of these things were true? Well, I know the answer is not many of them. And yet, they’ve been repeated and reimagined for generations in my family and others. Perhaps because these stories were born out of the desire to answer what often seemed the most unanswerable questions of life and death. And maybe they persist because we also treasure the comfort of mystery, when the answers might be too hard.
Storytelling isn’t always all that interested in hard facts, but here is what I’m certain of these days. My own roots trace back generations to the Scots-Irish who brought so many of these stories and customs with them, bits of nostalgia or homespun wisdom to tuck away like touchstones from the home that haunted them. And their melancholy fabulism haunts me, too, populating my own fiction with flights of fancy.
Of course, I know what my ancestors most probably did not — this new land seemed so achingly familiar to them because geologically, the two continents had once been part of a whole. And these stories are not only found in Appalachia, but farther South in the Lowcountry of Georgia and South Carolina, where the same folklore can be found in the storytelling histories.
In fact, take a look at the folklore and superstition the world over and see if you don’t find some of your old favorites winking at you. Because the truth at the heart of our folklore and superstition is that as far apart as we sometimes seem, we are all connected by the mysteries we carry with us. Wonders truly never cease. The earth from which our stories spring is one fabled, haunted homeland, and we are the ghosts.
