Click here to add text.

   

                                          For more information, call 1 (304) 599-2294 or write:

                                                                                 Trillium Publishing

                                                                              454 Kensington Ave

                                                                           Star City, WV 26505

                                                                       e-mail: trilpub@gmail.com

            

The publication of SNAKE HILL by Norman Julian provides a non-fiction companion volume to his  sequel, TRILLIUM ACRES, and his award-winning novel, CHEAT.

SNAKE HILL is a collection of essays about a rugged spot in the Allegheny Mountains, where snakes are common, bears usually present, mountain lions not unheard of, and newspapermen a novelty.  Ralph Brem, past editor of The Dominion Post at Morgantown, provided the foreword.

In separate years, the Pennsylvania Society of Newspaper Editors and  the West Virginia Press Association named Julian best columnist in their states.

CHEAT is an adventure tale that takes place in the severe winter of 1976-77 in the Cheat River area, where the author lives.

Although the books can be enjoyed separately, SNAKE HILL details the homesteading and outdoor adventure in some of the same places where the novel is set.

Brem writes that Julian "uses words like some good people use garlic...just enough so that you notice 'em and delicious enough to make you want to come back for more."

              What they say about SNAKE HILL

~ "SNAKE HILL is overdue in our literature of place: The pungent biography of and on-going concerns of one corner of West Virginia. Norman Julian's crisp, conversational, and frequently humorous voice advises us on a range of vital matters - animals, weather, house-raising, gardening, forest ecology, local history, geology, carpentry, not to mention the particular pleasures of cord-wood, garlic, and pick-up trucks. This is a notebook of ordinary wonders, an appreciation of everyday mysteries that should be on the reading list of every West Virginian - and anybody who cares about living with wisdom and grace. " - Richard Currey, O'Henry, Pushcart and Hemingway Foundation awards winner, writing in The Clarksburg Telegram.

~ "Norman Julian describes his hilltop home with the gritty certainty that comes of caring for                                            the earth  and     all its creatures, through blizzard and  birth and death. Like his old friend Emmett Heaster, he has learned a thing or two: why some barrels leak and others don't, for instance. How soap opera stars resemble laying hens. When a garden - or an outhouse - is also a work of art. He watches the wide world through the finely ground lens of the familiar and personal, and he tells about it in a voice that is opinionated, wry, wise and deeply generous." - Colleen Anderson, essayist and song writer.

~ "A most readable intimate look into a way of life, as Julian will readily admit, that is rapidly disappearing from West Virginia."  - Henry Ullman in The Glenville Democrat.

~ "One realizes that the younger generations will never again be able to fulfill the dream of many red-blooded men: to build their own home in a remote, unspoiled place as did Norman Julian. At least, this book will give them the feel of it." - Novelist Lawrance Wheeler in The Weston Democrat.

~ "(Snake Hill) is a place that is not just observed and ruminated over, but was cleared and built stone by stone by the author himself... His homestead is emblematic of a life that is independent by embracing its true dependence: on other human beings, on the water, on the garden..." - Meredith Sue Willis, New York novelist and Shinnston native in The Parkersburg News.

~ "If you've never understood the phrase `indomitable spirit,' read `Snake Hill.' And to understand a son of immigrant parents and the  struggle to survive, read the final chapter `Endings.' " - Sidney Lee, author and philanthropist.

~ "Here's the creed of a man who has really achieved Thoreau's simplified, more honest, more independent and satisfactory existence. This beautifully crafted book could just make believers of us all."  - Armand E. Singer, mountain climber, and professor of Romance languages, West Virginia University, writing in The Fairmont Times.

~ "Honest and informative, mature and well-done." - Rudolph Almasy,    past chair of West Virginia University English.

  

To order both books, send $35 to  Trillium Publishing,  454 Kensington Ave,  Star City ,  WV 26508. (Individual books, $19)

SNAKE HILL

...Homesteading

in the mountains

of West Virginia

Home

Legends

Cheat

Marano