Publication Date: April 2, 2024
At this wondrous resort, secrets can easily be hidden in plain sight when the eye is trained on beauty.
April 1913—Belle Newbold hasn’t seen mountains for seven years—since her father died in a mining accident and her mother married gasoline magnate, Shipley Newbold. But when her stepfather’s business acquaintance, Henry Ford, invites the family on one of his famous Vagabonds camping tours, she is forced to face the hills once again—primarily in order to reunite with her future fiancé, owner of the land the Vagabonds are using for their campsite, a man she’s only met once before. It is a veritable arranged marriage, but she prefers it that way. Belle isn’t interested in love. She only wants a simple life—a family of her own and the stability of a wealthy man’s pockets. That’s what Worth Delafield has promised to give her and it’s worth facing the mountains again, the reminder of the past, and her poverty, to secure her future.
But when the Vagabonds group is invited to tour the unfinished Grove Park Inn and Belle is unexpectedly thrust into a role researching and writing about the building of the inn—a construction the locals are calling The Eighth Wonder of the World—she quickly realizes that these mountains are no different from the ones she once called home. As Belle peels back the facade of Grove Park Inn, of Worth, of the society she’s come to claim as her own, and the truth of her heart, she begins to see that perhaps her part in Grove Park’s story isn’t a coincidence after all. Perhaps it is only by watching a wonder rise from ordinary hands and mountain stone that she can finally find the strength to piece together the long-destroyed path toward who she was meant to be.
International bestselling author Joy Callaway returns with a story of the ordinary people behind extraordinary beauty—and the question of who gets to tell their stories.
Sweeping, yet intimate. Self-centered, yet generous. Scenic yet horrendous. Joy Callaway’s What the Mountains Remember embodies all these in abundance and so much more. An incredibly well-written story of the building of Grove Park Inn in Ashville, North Carolina—includes not only the big names necessary to an endeavor of such magnitude but also the names of the everyday laborers who sometimes sacrificed their health, sometimes their very life to its construction.
Belle Newbold has a secret. It’s one that could not only snatch her from the life of luxury she’s come to enjoy but ultimately send her into a life of poverty. Belle, her mother, and her adoptive father, Shipley Newbold, have been invited to join the Vagabonds Tour. This group includes notables Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone as they tour and camp across the South.
The tour has recently stopped in Ashville, North Carolina, where the building of the magnificent Grove Park Inn has captured everyone’s imagination, including Belle’s, whose love is writing.
Worth Delafield, a wealthy land magnate in his own right, has recently asked Shipley Newbold for Belle’s hand in marriage. For both, it’s to be a marriage of convenience only, as both have sworn not to fall in love—this arrangement is only business. In the wake of the dismissal of the newspaper reporter traveling with the group, Worth encourages Belle in her writing and puts her forth as the ideal person to capture the essence of the Inn and those building it while designating himself to accompany her in her research.
Through a myriad of encounters involving Belle’s cousin, Marie Austen, their companions in the traveling ensemble, the Inn construction workers, and friends from Belle’s old life, which must remain secret, Worth and Belle’s plans not to fall in love with each other have fallen into peril. Each finds their heart lost to the other but fears admitting that or revealing the secret each holds in fear of driving the other way.
Captured against the scenic beauty of the North Carolina mountains and the lush valley in which the Tour camps, this captivating story, What the Mountains Remember, flourishes almost of its own accord, so fluently does it flow from Joy Callaway’s pen. Relatable and strong characters and equally powerful scene-building lure the reader effortlessly into the story’s portals as doors to the real world softly close, fully enveloping the reader into the story. The entire book is splendidly written, and even the Author’s Note at the conclusion is a delightful treat.
Exquisite in every detail and heartfelt in every emotion, What the Mountains Remember is a powerfully told story well worth not just reading, but experiencing.
Joy Callaway is the author of All the Pretty Places, The Grand Design, The Fifth Avenue Artists Society, and Secret Sisters. She holds a BA in journalism and public relations from Marshall University and an MMC from the University of South Carolina. She resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband, John, and her children, Alevia and John.
