Lawrence Burgher suffers deprivation and ridicule as a child, marking him for life. Determined to make the world respect him, he sees wealth and power as a means to that end. Under the tutelage of Edward Keeley, his mentor and future business partner, Lawrence parlays inherited land in Shapely, West Virginia, into a burgeoning career in real estate and banking. By 1918, Lawrence moves his wife Anna and his family to the booming city of Huntington, West Virginia, to become Vice-President of Keeley's bank in that city. As his real estate career escalates and his family grows, so does his ambition. Burgher borrows money to take advantage of the emerging land boom. Early success leads to arrogance and arrogance to poor decisions. He leverages his property to make his purchases, spending his cash on an increasingly lavish life style. By 1924, feeling the pinch of debt which he can not repay, Lawrence resorts to making secret new loans to himself to pay the old ones. Keeley, a man with few scruples himself, calls Lawrence to task, whereupon Lawrence quits his position at the bank. When Keeley recalls Burgher, Lawrence sees it as an opportunity to oust his former partner.Soon caught in a financial trap of his own making, Burgher resorts to kiting checks, falsifying loans and forgery to cover the truth of his situation. During a routine bank examination, the Banking Commissioner discovers the shaky financial condition of the bank and notices evidence of Burgher's irregular activities. Given fair warning, Burgher changes nothing. When the bank is closed for lack of funds in its reserve, all of Burgher's problems come to light. He is indicted for embezzlement and forced into bankruptcy. This tragedy is so devastating that the family forms a protective shell around themselves, vowing to hold their heads up no matter what the public gossip. Held together by Anna's strength, the family bears the humiliation of a public trial, where Burgher is convicted and sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary. Despite appeals to the U. S. Supreme Court, the conviction stands. Lawrence Burgher is taken to the state penitentiary at Moundsville, West Virginia, to suffer over-crowding, rampant tuberculosis and confinement in a cell smaller than the closets in his home. When the Great Depression hits, the Burgher family is already deep in poverty.In the spring after Lawrence leaves, Anna is struck with excruciating headaches. Diagnosed with a brain tumour, she goes to Baltimore for surgery, and spends her final year in a hospital, blind and dying. The oldest daughter, Eileen, takes over raising her younger siblings on her meagre teacher's pay. Moving again and again into successively smaller homes, the de facto orphans still maintain their dignity in the face of public gossip and pity. In 1932, Anna Burgher dies. Three months later, Lawrence Burgher dies suddenly in the penitentiary. Thoroughly shaken, it becomes the children's unspoken rule never to discuss their father's troubles. A myth is born and is eventually handed down to their children. Father's troubles becomes a code-word which they understand, but which is translated for the next generation into a romantic story of wealth lost during the Depression. Until Maggie is nearly forty, she never knows the real story. And when she begins to inquire, she is told some things are better left alone. Maggie, however, is determined to know the truth, hoping it will help her to understand her strained relationship with her mother.Over a twenty-year period she digs into the past without the help of her family. Through her efforts, Maggie gains a new respect for her mother, as she realises the strength of the Burgher women is deeply embedded in her and is the finest legacy she could have been given.

Father's Troubles

Literature & Fiction

Seaton, Carter Taylor

Literary

Mid-Atlantic Highlands Pub

fiction - a splendidly written story of family secrets played out against a background of time and change.

Father's Trouble$

At thirty-three, Mary Cate Randolph still believes in fairy tales. She’s been searching for Prince Charming all her life, but after she was date-raped by her last boyfriend, she is understandably cautious. When she meets tennis pro, Nick Hamilton, at her Asheville country club, she thinks she’s found the perfect man. He’s charming and intelligent, but not sexually aggressive. No wonder. It’s 1983 and unbeknownst to Mary Cate, a naïve homophobic, Nick is a closeted homosexual. Thus begins a tangled web of love, deception, and discovery that ultimately leads to Mary Cate’s transformation and realization that true love is far different from the fairy tale version.

amo, amas, amat...: An Unconventional Love Story

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

"She'd been born and raised on her Fayette County mountain in West 'by God' Virginia, and in all her thirty-three years had never stepped foot outside the state's borders. Her family and that mountain had overshadowed her entire unremarkable life. It wasn't that she didn't love both, or, for that matter, every inch of her farm in Gimlet Hollow. She did, deeply. But as she stood, letter in hand, she allowed herself to dream . . ." The Other Morgans is a riveting novel about home, history, race, ancestry, and love. Yearning for a better life for herself and her daughter, AJ is suddenly challenged to make a life-altering decision by the terms of an unexpected inheritance. Once she tentatively accepts the conditions of that inheritance, she encounters stories of her family's history that both attract and repel her. As Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz says, "There's no place like home." But what constitutes home? Where you're born, or where your ancestors came from? It's a question AJ must answer. Poverty or pipe dream? West Virginia or Virginia? AJ has one year to decide.

The Other Morgans

Koehler Books

Tales of two somewhat naughty girls and their neighborhood adventures from kindergarten throughhigh school.

Me and MaryAnn

Children's Books

Action & Adventure

Independently published

We Were Legends in Our Own Minds

Arts & Photography

Cobb, Richard

Music

Mountain State Press, Inc.

It’s the 1960s. The Vietnam War is raging and protests are erupting across the United States. In many quarters, young people are dropping out of society, leaving their urban homes behind in an attempt to find a safe place to live on their own terms, to grow their own food, and to avoid a war they passionately decry. During this time, West Virginia becomes a haven for thousands of these homesteaders―or back-to-the-landers, as they are termed by some. Others call them hippies.
 When the going got rough, many left. But a significant number remain to this day. Some were artisans when they arrived, while others adopted a craft that provided them with the cash necessary to survive. Hippie Homesteaders tells the story of this movement from the viewpoint of forty artisans and musicians who came to the state, lived on the land, and created successful careers with their craft. There’s the couple that made baskets coveted by the Smithsonian Institution’s Renwick Gallery. There’s the draft-dodger that fled to Canada and then became a premier furniture maker. There’s the Boston-born VISTA worker who started a quilting cooperative. And, there’s the immigrant Chinese potter who lived on a commune.
 Along with these stories, Hippie Homesteaders examines the serendipitous timing of this influx and the community and economic support these crafters received from residents and state agencies in West Virginia. Without these young transplants, it’s possible there would be no Tamarack: The Best of West Virginia, the first statewide collection of fine arts and handcrafts in the nation, and no Mountain Stage, the weekly live musical program broadcast worldwide on National Public Radio since 1983. Forget what you know about West Virginia.
Hippie Homesteaders isn’t about coal or hillbillies or moonshine or poverty. It is the story of why West Virginia was―and still is―a kind of heaven to so many.

Hippie Homesteaders: Arts, Crafts, Music and Living on the Land in West Virginia

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

West Virginia University Press

The Rebel in the Red Jeep follows the personal and professional experiences of Ken Hechler, the oldest living person to have served in the US Congress, from his childhood until his marriage at 98 years of age. This biography recounts a century of accomplishments, from Hechler’s introduction of innovative teaching methods at major universities, to his work as a speechwriter and researcher for President Harry Truman, and finally to his time representing West Virginia in the US House of Representatives and as the secretary of state. In West Virginia, where he resisted mainstream political ideology, Hechler was the principal architect behind the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 and constantly battled big coal, strip-mining, and fellow politicians alike. He and his signature red jeep remain a fixture in West Virginia. Since 2004, Hechler has campaigned against mountaintop removal mining. He was arrested for trespassing during a protest in 2009 at the age of 94.

The Rebel in the Red Jeep: Ken Hechler's Life in West Virginia Politics

Guilt

United States

Blackwater Press

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