Cherokee Mysteries: Oakman Writer Sets Trilogy in Bankhead Wilderness

7/27/2019 Cherokee Mysteries: Oakman Writer Sets Trilogy in Bankhead Wilderness

1/4

CHEROKEE MYSTERIES:

Oakman Writers Trilogy Set in Bankhead Wilderness

By Dale Short

Some of Wheeler Pounds best memories of his time at Cordova High

School are of its library: The library was kind of under the stairs, there, he

recalls, and I was always a serious reader. I probably read every book they

had. Each one would take you on a different journey. I was raised out in the

sticks and we didnt have much, and stories could take you to places youd

never have seen, otherwise.

But after college, Pounds found himself in a job that required a very

different type of reading. In the process he would see hundreds of real-life

stories that rarely had happy endings. Beginning in the 1960s he worked 33years for the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, and his courthouse

office was a figurative window on the darker side of human nature.

The rewarding part is the people I still run into today, who bring me

up to date on how their families are doing, he says. And some of them tell

me they appreciate what I did to help them get their lives back on the right

track. The disturbing part is seeing so many others names in the obituaries,


2/4

from bad choices theyve made. Everything from cirrhosis of the liver to

drug overdoses, car accidents, shootings. It completely runs the gamut.

When you go into a job like that, you know youre not going to

change the world. But you hope you can make some difference, and that

society will be somewhat better for it.Once Pounds retired, he was free to pursue his favorite pastimes:

reading Alabama history, and taking long hikes to explore some off-the-

beaten-path areas of the nearby Bankhead National Forest. And it was the

combination of those two activities that has led his path full circle to literary

concerns again: hes written two historical mystery novels set in the forest,

and is halfway through the third part of the trilogy.

The first volume is The Garden of Eve: Mystery of the Cherokee

Hideaway, and the second is The Cellar Vault: Secret of the Cherokee

Hideaway. Both are available online from Amazon.

He originally envisioned the books as being set in the Smokies, hesays, but the more time he spent in Bankhead, the more possibilities he saw

there. And his own Cherokee ancestryhes a member of the Alabama

Echota Tribe--became the impetus for several of the story threads. In one, a

couple by the name of Eve and Fox are hiding out in the canyon to avoid

capture by federal troops during the forced migration of the Trail of Tears.

At another point, a family discovers a journal kept by a Cherokee woman

during her journey on the trail.

Pounds also credits some Alabama authors for helping him navigate

the deep woods, especially the Sipsey Canyon, without mishap. JimManascos guide book Walking Sipsey is a particular favorite, and Pounds

has his novels hero, Raleigh Walker, reading from the Manasco book in the

opening chapter of The Garden of Eve:

The vista will quiet an appetite for natural beauty, but from the little

falls on downstream, its a different story, Manasco writes. Take heed;

there are no trails in this canyon, and it is no place for the tenderfoot. The

bluffs are high, and the ledges are slick and narrow. It is dangerousone

slip and youve had it.

But as it turns out, that part is the GOOD news. The paragraph that

follows is the clincher:To bushwhack this type of terrain, you have to watch every step and

never drop your guard. Old-timers shunned this part of the area. The rocky

crags and the thickets are the home of numerous canebrake rattlesnakes,

some of record size.

In keeping with the theme, a sizeable rattlesnake occupies the lower

left corner of the cover illustration for The Garden of Eve.


3/4

Feedback from readers on the snake portions of the story has fallen

pretty clearly along gender lines, Pounds says: Some men have told me that

Raleighs backpacking adventure is their favorite part, but several ladies

comments are along the lines of, I enjoyed the book once we got out of the

rattlesnakes; I just cant stand snakes.The two most frequent questions he gets from readers are (a) how he

came to find the Trail of Tears journal quoted in the book, and (b) the

specific location of the hidden cove where Eve and Fox hide out from the

troops. People actually want directions, Pounds says, and I have to tell

them its all a work of fiction. The journal is imaginary, and so is the cove.

There are several places in the forest with rock shelters similar to it, but the

storys not set in any specific one.

I also had a gentleman tell me he had been to the location in the book

where the characters Raleigh and Jenny are married, a resort area in the

Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia, and how pretty it was. I thought Ihad made the location up.

Pounds writing desk faces a picture window that appears to look out

on a wilderness as deep as the one he writes about. In reality, with the leaves

starting to fall in Oakman, Highway 69 is clearly visible from the back deck.

But in other respects the room gives the illusion of a remote aerie

especially with the odor of cooking spices in the air, and an old wood-

burning stove in the corner.

Pounds scrolls down through the Word document currently on his

laptop and clicks on the word count feature.Right now, he says, Ive got 53,242 words, which is 122 pages. So

Ive got a ways to go.

The third volume, he says, moves ahead from the 1830s Trail of Tears

events to the beginning of the Civil War, and focuses on a family of Tories

who are against the South entering the war, and the intersection of their lives

with some Union Army spies.

One of the most encouraging comments hes gotten on the first two

Cherokee Hideaway volumes, he says, was from a reader who wrote, I

enjoyed the books, even though I have a dislike for history. And last week,

Pounds checked his Amazon account and found that he had sold his firstcopy of the book in the United Kingdom.

Its amazing to me how small the world has become, he says, and

how these communications and exchanges can be done in an instant. Its like

a mysteryit makes me wonder whatll happen next.

# # #


4/4

(Dale Short's e-mail address is [email protected])

Cherokee Mysteries: Oakman Writer Sets Trilogy in Bankhead Wilderness

Documents

Transcript of Cherokee Mysteries: Oakman Writer Sets Trilogy in Bankhead Wilderness