Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle’s Novel “Even As We Breathe” Examines Race and Class in the Secluded Microcosm of Asheville’s Grove Park Inn During 1942
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In this episode 173, we visit with Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, author of “Even As We Breathe,” a coming of age story for a young Native American set in the Western mountains of North Carolina. The novel examines race and class in the secluded microcosm of Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina during the summer of 1942.
David Joy, author of “When These Mountains Burn,” says this is “a period piece that illuminates and echoes our current time. A powerful story told by voices that ring true as scripture…a masterful debut from the writer we need right now.” Silas House, author of “Southernmost” observes that “Even As We Breathe” is a remarkable and important debut novel that announces a major new voice in southern literature, and one that we have waited far too long to hear.
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About the Author:
Author Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her work Going to Water won the Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium and was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.
After serving as Executive Director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, Annette (National Board Certified since 2012) returned to teaching English and Cherokee Studies at Swain County High School. She is the former co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and serves on the Board of Trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network.
Annette is the first member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to publish a novel.
More Praise for the Book
” Even As We Breathe is a fresh, welcome, and much needed addition to the fiction of the Appalachian South and its neglected people and places. Clapsaddle creates characters with sensitivity, subtlety, humor, and warmth. A splendid debut by a writer well worth following.”
— Charles Frazier, New York Times bestselling author
“Debut writer Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle lifts the curtain to show us a South we don’t know, revealed through the struggles of Cowney Sequoyah, a young man growing up within the Cherokee Nation of far Western North Carolina, and yet another surprise setting when he takes a job at Asheville’s fabled Grove Park Inn while it is being used by the US military as a place of internment for Axis prisoners of war during World War II. Even As We Breathe is a wonderful novel, complicated as life itself — thrilling, mysterious, and finally, a revelation!”
— Lee Smith, New York Times bestselling author
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