Ed V. reviewed on 12/28/2015

Reading some of these reviews makes me realize how shallow people can be. They love it...then they trash it when they discover the truth about the writer. It shouldn't matter. Asa or Forrest was a jerk, not only in his politics but in his personal life. He was not a good person by today's standards...but since when do we judge books by researching the author's history. I agree it was misrepresented as an autobiography, but that doesn't change anything else about the book. And, for the individual who had the nerve to say he saw through the book before knowing about the controversy....well, I don't buy it. If you have any real understanding of the Cherokee culture and how it blended into what we see today you would be hesitant to judge how that culture looked in 1929 in the mountains of Appalachia. Some traditions were lost, some lingered and some morphed into something different. Remember, these folks were isolated in very small family groups with frequent brushes with the outside culture of the time. I know this because when I was a kid I heard many stories about my great great grandmother and the stories she told about how her parents had evaded the trail of tears when they were children. The term was never mentioned back then...I added it later when I read about it in high school. This book is wonderful. It is tough to believe Asa Carter could have written it. It could have be written by someone promoting the ugliness of racism. Maybe the guy was repenting, who knows.

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