It’s National Book Lovers Day, and Allegany County, the Mountain Side of Maryland, is the perfect place to dive into the comfort of a thrilling tale under a tree in a park or on the plush forest floor or with your toes in the sand on the beach of Lake Habeeb. We asked one of Mountain Maryland’s beloved book store owners, Fred Powell of Main Street Books, for his recommendations on great books about Mountain Maryland or by Mountain Maryland authors. Check out his recommendations below.
James Rada is an amazon.com bestselling author who writes non-fiction history and historical fiction. Learn little-known truths about Mountain Maryland, Allegany County, or the C&O Canal in Rada’s historic non-fiction books Secrets of Mountain Maryland, Secrets of Allegany County, and Secrets of the C&O Canal, or discover some of the more complex sides of Mountain Maryland’s history such as the coal mining wars of Georges Creek or the German Prisoner of War camp near Flintstone, MD, during WWII in Looking Back - True Stories of Mountain Maryland. Dive into a historical fiction thriller set in the coal fields of Western Maryland in the Black Fire Trilogy: Smouldering Betrayal, Strike the Fuse, and Frostburg Burning.
One of our greatest assets in Allegany County, MD, is the beauty and wonder of the natural world, and award-winning local author Barbara Hurd captures this wonder through words in her collection of essays Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination.
And for a different perspective on the historical, be sure to check out Colored People: A Memoir by Henry Louis Gates Jr, American professor, filmmaker, literary critic, and historian who grew up right over state line in Piedmont, WV. Throughout the memoir, Gates includes parts of Allegany County and shows the reader the strengths to be found in family and mountain communities.
And regardless of whether you’re reading the tales of Mountain Maryland, we highly suggest visiting one of Mountain Maryland’s independent bookstores. Independent bookstores are a rare treasure in any community, and we are lucky to have two that have thrived for decades in our mountain communities of Frostburg and Cumberland.
