Featured Reviews

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John Hood: “Although my novel has many non-human characters, I actually use them to illustrate the inescapable realities of human nature. We are all fallen  creatures. We yield to temptation.”

John Hood: “Thrilling escapes,  confrontations with magical monsters, Revolutionary War battles, and Hamilton and Jefferson debate banking regulations. I  mean, what more could you ask for?” 

In a Kings Mountain Herald feature, John Hood discusses the Mountain Folk chapter devoted to the Patriots — including Isaac Shelby, John Sevier, and Davy Crockett’s father — who fought at Kings Mountain.

John  Hood: “There are many explanations for fairy belief. It’s reassuring to believe good and bad events aren’t just random.  That powerful forces are at work, magical forces to be tapped or propitiated.”

John  Hood: “Ideas do have consequences. But they are contingent on factors beyond the substance and soundness of the ideas themselves. Human beings aren’t calculating machines. We're storytellers.”

John Hood: “We should make greater use of fiction to teach fact. Weaving historical content into fiction with strong characters and compelling  plots makes it easier for readers to recall and interpret facts.”

Do favorable reviews of Mountain Folk constitute political ads on behalf of zombie candidates or Elf-rights legislation? John Hood uses the absurdity of a Facebook rule to argue for common sense on free speech.

In this feature, John Hood explains how he came to include his own relatives in the plot of Mountain Folk. “I wasn’t just telling stories about colonial Americans. I was, in a sense, telling my own family’s story.”

John Hood: “To broaden and deepen our understanding of our country’s rich  history need not harm America’s founding principles or national unity. It need not result in canceled heroes.”

John Hood: “We need histories, novels, films, music, and art that embrace a  common American creed, that celebrate its inspiring past & boundless future. We need more stories of heroic Americans.”

In this column for dozens of newspapers, author John Hood describes his book’s themes by referring his days in 4-H. The four “H”s in Mountain Folk include history, heroes, heritage, and human nature.

Pilot  Mountain, a key setting for Mountain Folk, is just a few miles from the town that inspired the Mayberry of “The Andy Griffith Show.” Its devotion to timeless moral truths continues to draw many fans.

John Hood: If the two frontier heroes ever met, “the resulting dialogue may well have resembled the banter between the gallant Captain America and the wisecracking Iron Man in the Avengers movies.”

Though “an ill-conceived war carried out by an ill-prepared country with ill-defined goals,” the War of 1812 produced many heroes who led or inspired generations of Americans. John Hood tells their stories.

“People want to live in a world where not all mysteries have been solved, where  something furry, slimy, or improbably gargantuan may yet be lurking in the darkest corners of their mental map.”

When Americans needed hope, Zora Neale Hurston offered a character from African-American folklore, High John de Conquer. John Hood explains why he featured her version of the character in Forest Folk.

“How many learn about the temptations of power not by reading philosophy but by witnessing the One Ring corrupt its bearers? How many learn courage not from classic literature but from Harry Potter?”

John Hood: “Honor matters. It’s not the only thing that matters, of course, but to deny its significance in human affairs—including affairs among nations—is a position far removed from realism.”

 “With the possible exception of his great-nephew Stephen, author of The Red Badge of Courage, Ichabod is the most famous Crane of all, if only for a fictional namesake. And he lived in Norfolk for many years.”

John Hood’s Memorial Day-themed piece profiles five U.S. military commanders who died performing their duties — including War of 1812 hero Zebulon Pike, whose final battle is depicted in Forest Folk.

“The only conception of America expansive enough to include three hundred  and thirty squabbling millions of us is a common creed of liberty,  justice, and opportunity for all.”