Pleasant Valley Lost

By Joseph J. Swope

Book Overview

Maxy Awards Winner - Best Nonfiction

The government took the land. But it couldn't erase what was built there.

In the late 1960s, Joseph J. Swope's family farm-worked for generations in one of Pennsylvania's most fertile valleys-was condemned to make way for the Blue Marsh Dam. What followed was not just the loss of property, but the dismantling of a way of life.

In Pleasant Valley Lost, Swope recounts the final years of the farm his family called home, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved forward with a project that would ultimately submerge an entire community.

Told with clarity and conviction, this memoir captures the emotional toll of displacement-the uncertainty, the resistance, and the quiet resilience required to move forward when everything familiar is taken away.

More than a personal story, it is a record of a vanished place and a reminder of the human cost behind progress.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1612964672
• ISBN13: 9781612964676
• Release Date: January 2015
• Publisher: Black Rose Writing
• Length: 540 Pages
• Weight: 1.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"