It was another peaceful evening on the Cumberland
as the sun faded behind the clouds and nightfall
crept up like a stranger in the night.

As the sun went down, shadows loomed across the
water over Bunker Hill, Old Burnside, and the lost
stories of Harriette Simpson Arnow, who once called
this place home.

With the erosion of traditional Southern Appalachian
rural life during the Industrial Age, she penned The
Dollmaker, a best-selling novel much like her own 
story.  Imagine what Gertie and Sophronie would 
have said today.

She never saw the last steamboat depart for Nashville
from the banks of the Cumberland, or the last passenger
train blow its whistle as it rolled out of the Old Burnside
station.

Her footsteps are now covered by water where many 
memories have floated down the Cumberland.  A lonely
historical marker stands above the lake in tribute to her
life.

Her final resting place is nestled in the woods of Daniel
Boone National Forest south of her childhood home in a
place among the wildflowers that is largely forgotten. 

As the spring flowers bloom on the Cumberland, one
should remember the dollmaker, a rural farm girl who
became a literary giant in a time when female writers 
faced so many challenges.

If only the stately trees on Bunker Hill or the waves
over Old Burnside could talk, imagine the magical 
stories that could be told from another time that has
all but faded away.