My House Wasn't on Stilts: Rites of Passage for a Displaced Appalachian (A Very Southern Novel)

My House Wasn¡¯t on Stilts tells the poignant and humorous story of a boy from the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. It examines a childhood spent on the move and his many sojourns in the North: including Detroit, the Appalachian Mecca of the 1950s and 1960s. It then follows the narrator through the rites of passage of young adulthood: leaving home, going to college, marriage, job hunting, and downsizing. The book explores a peculiarly Appalachian side of Southern culture. How do people who move out of the region regard themselves and their background? How do they measure themselves against the values of their home region and the sometimes larger than life legacy of their family?