If you have never visited Black Mountain, North Carolina, by the time you finish reading Sarah Loudin Thomas’s These Blue Mountains (Bethany House 2025) you will want to pack your bags and go. Fans of Kim Michele Richardson’s The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, Jayne Anne Phillips’s Night Watch, and Annette Clapsaddle’s Even As We Breathe will find much to love in Thomas’s novel. Like those novels, These Blue Mountains unearths a little-known chapter of American history with rich emotional depth.
Set in 1932, the story follows Hedda Schlagel, a gifted young pianist from Berlin, who travels to the North Carolina mountains to recover the body of her fiancé, Fritz. She hopes that bringing him home for burial will bring closure—for both herself and his grieving mother.
Fritz, though not a soldier, served in the German navy. When his ship came near U.S. shores at the outbreak of World War I, he and his crewmates were detained as enemy aliens and imprisoned in a camp in Hot Springs, North Carolina. For a time, Fritz wrote letters to Hedda, but they suddenly stopped. Fifteen years later, Hedda is still caring for his ailing mother when she sees a photograph of a memorial listing Fritz’s name among the dead. The bodies are being exhumed and relocated—news that compels her to uncover what really happened.
Deputy Garland Jones was the man ordered to bury Fritz and the others, and he’s never forgotten how hasty and suspicious the burial seemed:
“Something hadn’t been right, and he’d long wondered if some dark secret was buried with all those bodies.”
As the graves are unearthed, long-buried secrets begin to surface—scandals, betrayals, and revelations that reshape everything Hedda thought she knew.
But the story doesn’t end there. Hedda’s journey leads her to Black Mountain, where a new liberal arts college is being formed under the leadership of John Andrew Rice. As a musician, she’s drawn to the creative spirit of the place—and to two German Jewish friends from home who have found refuge there. With the situation in Germany worsening, Hedda must ask herself: Should she seek a future in America? And might that future include more than just a job? Her connection with Deputy Jones hints at the possibility of love and belonging in this unfamiliar land.
Part mystery, part romance, and wholly grounded in history, These Blue Mountains is a compelling and unforgettable novel.
Sarah Loudin Thomas
Sarah Loudin Thomas, a seventh-generation West Virginian, grew up on a hundred-acre farm in French Creek, WV. Her fiction often celebrates the people, landscape, and heritage of Appalachia. She is the director of Jan Karon’s Mitford Museum in Hudson, NC, and holds a degree in English from Coastal Carolina University. Thomas is the award-winning author of The Right Kind of Fool, which won the 2021 Selah Book of the Year, and Miracle in a Dry Season, recipient of the 2015 INSPY Award. She has also been a finalist for the Christy Award, the ACFW Carol Award, and the Christian Book of the Year Award. She currently lives with her husband in western North Carolina.
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