Digging deep into Olive Hill: Author pens two-volume historical fiction book
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May 10—Author Willie Davis has dedicated 1,000-plus pages to Olive Hill — but the two-volume package accounts for more than 150 years of history in the small Carter County town.
Davis, who resides in Mansfield, Ohio, penned "Olive Hill," a historical fiction novel about how the Appalachian town can lay claim to building America.
"Olive Hill has a surprising creation story," said Davis, who has family ties in the area and recently made a trip to northeastern Kentucky. "Hundreds of thousands of Kentucky's sons and daughters migrated to the industrial north in the 1940s and '50s without realizing how their past had helped build America. My family was among them. I became determined to tell Olive Hill's storied past."
Volume 1 encompasses 1800-1884. Volume to reaches back from 1884 up to June 1959.
The story follows the fictitious Reed family. The volumes integrate 339 fictional characters into 159 years of American history to tell how Olive Hill gave all it had in a time it was most needed.
"Carter County was blessed with an abundance of diverse natural resources, including timber, iron ore, coal and limestone," Davis said. "During the Industrial Revolution, one of its towns, Olive Hill, became the center of a 600-square-mile hotbed of fire clay, a unique heat-resistant clay used to make firebricks."
Davis said thousands of hard-working Olive Hill people dug, molded and fired that clay into firebricks that ultimately lined hearth steel furnaces, locomotive fireboxes and steamship boilers.
"Without the steel, there would be no skyscrapers and no rail lines," Davis said. "Without the trains and ships, there would be no movement to expedite a growing nation. Olive Hill firebricks helped make this possible."
Davis said he dedicates this novel to anyone interested in Olive Hill.
"More people need to know the Olive Hill story," he said. "And more people need to know more American history."
Contact Davis at willied@neo.rr.com for information or for autographed copies. Visit williedavisbooks.com for more information or to purchase a copy. Books are available at several spots online.
(606) 326-2664 — asnyder@dailyindependent.com
