Southern writer Casey Clabough revisits the hardscrabble life of ancestor Columbus Clabough: the last of his family to live by the old Smoky Mountain ways — ways unsuited to a modern world. In the wake of run-ins with bootleggers and Overhill Cherokee, Columbus departs to serve his country in World War I, only to return and find the mountains and himself afflicted by ravages not unlike those witnessed overseas. Bringing us into a vanished world of red wolves, chestnuts, and human way of life long forgotten, Clabough offers a powerful narrative that captures the life of his great uncle — a life so strongly linked to the land that it reflects the changes and sufferings of the mountains.

A portion of proceeds from the sale of this book will go towards The American Chestnut Foundation.

IN PRAISE OF The End of the Mountains:

“The End of the Mountains is a powerful, lyrical, haunting account of the lives of mountain people who survive on the threshold between a timeless wilderness and the encroaching pressures of modernity. . . By turns reminiscent of the work of William Faulkner, James Dickey, and Cormac Mc Carthy.” — Michael P. Branch, author of Raising Wild and Rants from the Hill.