Description

---

Anyone with an interest in national parks or the history of the state of Virginia or travelers to Shenandoah or Skyline Drive will appreciate this book. —Rachel Owens, Library Journal 

For fifteen years Sue Eisenfeld hiked in Shenandoah National Park in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains, unaware of the tragic history behind the creation of the park. In this travel narrative, she tells the story of her on-the-ground discovery of the relics and memories a few thousand mountain residents left behind when the government used eminent domain to kick the people off their land to create the park.

With historic maps and notes from hikers who explored before her, Eisenfeld and her husband hike, backpack, and bushwhack the hills and the hollows of this beloved but misbegotten place, searching for stories. Descendants recount memories of their ancestors “grieving themselves to death,” and they continue to speak of their people’s displacement from the land as an untold national tragedy.

Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal is Eisenfeld’s personal journey into the park’s hidden past based on her off-trail explorations. She describes the turmoil of residents’ removal as well as the human face of the government officials behind the formation of the park. In this conflict between conservation for the benefit of a nation and private land ownership, she explores her own complicated personal relationship with the park—a relationship she would not have without the heartbreak of the thousands of people removed from their homes.

About the Author

---

Sue Eisenfeld is a freelance writer, communications consultant, and faculty member in the Johns Hopkins University MA in Writing Program. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Gettysburg Review, and other publications. Her website is sueeisenfeld.com.

Praise For…

---

"Eisenfeld writes about Shenandoah the way Annie Proulx writes about Wyoming or Edward Abbey about the deserts of the Southwest: pristine, unsentimental, eloquent prose."—Kirkus

"Anyone with an interest in national parks or the history of the state of Virginia or travelers to Shenandoah or Skyline Drive will appreciate this book."—Rachel Owens, Library Journal

"[Shenandoah is a] richly textured look at the human drama of creating one of the jewels of the national park system."—Rachel Jagareski, Foreword Reviews

"Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal . . . beautifully captures the mountain people and the official vendetta that made them refugees from their own land."—James Bovard, Washington Times
 

“Shenandoah is a beautifully written portrait of a history-haunted landscape: wistful, wild, and enchanting, like the best of autumn hikes through Shenandoah National Park.”—Tony Horwitz, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“The juxtaposition of delight with the land and the haunting of Shenandoah’s history is beautifully written, giving us the feel of the park and the lure of knowing its past.”—Katrina M. Powell, author of The Anguish of Displacement: The Politics of Literacy in the Letters of Mountain Families in Shenandoah National Park