This summer, Star Route Books published a three-volume treasury of stories, poems, and illustrations from the pen and imagination of the iconic naturalist, artist and author, Emma Bell Miles (1879–1919), about life in her beloved, southern Appalachian mountains:

• The Spirit of the Mountains and Select Works of Emma Bell Miles
• Our Southern Birds and the Fountain Square Conversations by Emma Bell Miles
• Stories of the Mountains – Selected Short Stories by Emma Bell Miles

Miles was a wife and mother whose poems and short stories appeared in national magazines in the early 1900s. She sold her first poem to Harper’s Monthly in 1904, but was probably best known for the book The Spirit of the Mountains, that she published a year later.

Her adult life was filled with poverty and health issues. She endured a troubled marriage. She was interested in women’s rights and suffrage. Her work reflects those themes, but through her writing, she also asserts great and positive and complex ideas- both, in her descriptions of interpersonal situations and of the natural world.

Mrs. Miles passed away at the age of just 39 from tuberculosis. Her last effort, the book, Our Southern Birds, was published posthumously in 1922. It was adopted as a textbook by the State of Kentucky, and later by Tennessee.

Star Route Books is proud to be able to help make available, once again, the timeless writings from this great author. For more information, and to purchase, visit www.starroutebooks.com.