It’s the birthday of the father of Appalachian literature, John Ehle (1925-2018,#nicelonglife), who wrote great epic novels set in the Appalachian Mountains and one of whose fans was Harper Lee. She called Ehle “our foremost writer of historical fiction.”

Ehle was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and grew up in West Asheville, the oldest son of a father who worked in insurance and a mother who didn’t want any books in the house other than the Bible. Ehle served as an Army rifleman in WWII and then studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning a B.A. in 1949 in Radio,Television, and Motion Pictures (think how cutting edge that must have seemed back then, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth) and an M.A. in 1953 in Dramatic Arts. He also taught at UNC from 1951-1963, and in the early 60s was invited to act as a special consultant to the state government in developing arts education. During this time, he also published his first three novels.

Ehle’s fourth novel was The Land Breakers (1964), about an Appalachian settler in 1779; it was the first in Ehle’s cycle of seven Appalachian novels and established him as a master storyteller. (I see it receives 4.29 stars on Goodreads, which is impressive; so many brilliant books never get over 4 stars.) The next novel in the cycle, The Road (1967), is about the railroad coming to a remote Appalachian region. Several books later, the crime novel Last One Home (1984) ends the cycle. Two of Ehle’s other novels, The Journey of August King (1971) and The Winter People (1982), were adapted for film.

Speaking of which: Ehle was married to British actress Rosemary Harris, and their daughter is Jennifer Ehle, perhaps best known for her role as Elizabeth Bennet in the five-hour BBC rendition of Pride and Prejudice (woot-woot!), which is, speaking objectively, the best of all Pride and Prejudice renditions, and we should all drop everything today and lie on the couch watching it while eating vast quantities of Cheez-Its Classic Snack Mix and homemade sea salt brownies.

Ehle was critically acclaimed in his lifetime but somehow never became hugely well-known with the reading public; perhaps it’s not too late to turn that around. Ehle died on March 24 of this year at the age of 92.

Have a splendid Thursday beneath a pale winter sky and stay scrupulously honest to the data.