The Town on Beaver Creek: The Story of a Lost Kentucky Community

by Michelle Slatalla

Book Overview

'The Town on Beaver Creek' is an intimate look at small town America. With research materials that included court reports, diaries, love letters, interviews and newspaper archives, Slatalla has... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375509054
• ISBN13: 9780375509056
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.6" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Amazing Town! Amazing Family!

This book...I couldn't put it down. The author writes with such directness, you feel as if you are there, in this town that refused to give up. The family and town folk are weird, warm, crazy, tough, amazing.

This is My Home Town

Lots of hard work and research was put into this book. It is well written and fun to read. If you love to read and have a chance to read this book it is really wonderful.

A look backward in time and space....

For someone who grew up in Kentucky, though I do not know E. Ky. very well, this is a fantastic book, and a little seen view into the small town areas in Eastern Kentucky who are so adversely affected by the floods on the Big Sandy and others. The author has personalized it in myriad ways and has backed it up with people and documents at every turn. Her style of writing is easy to read and very appropriate to her subject. It's a great read, and I would recommend it to anyone with a deep love of the Bluegrass State and its people.

totally captivating

as a resident of martin, i just had to read this book. it was great. i've been to the cemetary and seen where these ppl now rest. i've shopped in e.p. grisbsy's store that is still in business. it does read like a fiction novel which makes it even better. i kept imagining myself at the old train depot and hestas different houses. i know where most of those places once stood and reading this book (even tho we're of no relation to the families that the book is about) it was a lil like going home. like sitting around and hearing your grandparents tell of their history. I couldn't put it down! I read the entire book in one day.

The Little Town That Could...

I'm willing to bet most people (myself included) started this book thinking it was ridiculous. Why would people continue to live in a town that floods EVERY year? Well, after getting a few chapters into this book, I began to understand. This town had become a family, and they couldn't dream of moving away and living elsewhere. Now, while the author, Mrs. Slatalla, has never lived in Martin, Kentucky herself, her relatives all have. Her mother and aunts were born and raised there, along with her grandparents, and her great-grandparents spent the majority of their lives there. Her family (great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and so on) were very active members of the Martin community. They worked for the coal companies and the C & O Rail Co. that were part of Martin's heyday in the 30's and 40's. Her grandmother Mary worked as a nurse in the local hospital, and oversaw the births of countless of the towns residences. Overall, I just loved this book. It reads like a fiction novel, but there's no doubt that the folks in this book were real. I have grown an extreme fondness for the Mynhiers, Wolvertons, Flannerys, Salisburys, and all the rest of this town that has now disappeared into to history. I must say that I agree with Mrs. Slatalla though...even though the Army Corps of Engineers is going to rebuild Martin, Kentucky so the yearly floods will no longer be a problem, and planned communities and a new relocated downtown is planned, it won't be the same. It won't be the original Martin, and to those who know it's past, and have spent their lives there, it couldn't possibly still feel like home.