Another story close to my heart, alongside the Daugherty Saga, is my standalone novel The Longhunt. It’s rooted in my own frontier ancestry in what is now Tennessee. I can trace my furthest maternal line back to 1779, to the wild country near the Holston River Valley. What began as an experiment — a vague feeling, almost like a memory, and a desire to try writing in present tense — became a two‑month dash to capture something that felt otherworldly and not entirely of my own making.
It is probably the only book I’ve ever written almost completely chronologically. That’s unusual for me, and from what I understand, for many writers. I tend to write in pieces, like an old quilt stitched together from an Appalachian scrap basket — following instinct, emotion, or whatever thread of research pulls me next.
The Longhunt, however, arrived differently. It came like a stream of memory. Like the Daugherty Saga, it emerged during a particularly trying time in my life, when much of my real world felt like it was falling apart. Writing it became a kind of balm — a place to stand in another time, another landscape, another heartbeat.
At its core, The Longhunt is the story of a journey — not only through the wilderness, but through the human heart. A journey of time and memory. It is the woods‑forged imagining of the parents of my ancestor Ann McIntyre, and the Scots‑Irish pulse that threaded itself through the Appalachian backcountry.
Researching this novel was not difficult — I’m well familiar with the era — but Ted Franklin Belue’s book The Hunters of Kentucky was invaluable for understanding how these men operated deep in the wilderness of what is now Kentucky.
Most people are familiar with the most famous longhunter of all: Daniel Boone. His stories were often dismissed as tall tales, but in a time when a man’s word was his reputation, perhaps they weren’t so far‑fetched. The longhunters themselves were precursors to the later cowboys — men who resented their range and freedom being curtailed by incoming settlers. Some had families they returned to; others lived half‑wild, disappearing into the woods for six months or more to hunt buffalo in the canebrake, track bear and deer, or trap smaller animals as winter closed in. Their pelts were carried to trading posts in places like Vincennes, Kaskaskia, Fort Caswell, and Fort Pitt.
Ever since childhood, I was entranced by tales of Daniel Boone and the Cumberland Gap. They stirred something in me, like a forgotten memory. Much later, I learned that some of my ancestors knew Boone and his family, and at least one died defending the fort of his brother, Squire Boone.
Naturally, their presence in lands long used by the Shawnee, Wyandotte, and Cherokee was not welcomed. In 1778, Boone himself was captured while salt‑boiling and adopted into the Shawnee, earning the name Little Turtle. His reputation likely saved his life.
This incident echoes in The Longhunt:
Nemethane tells Johnnie, “You hunt in these woods without permission.”
“We are headed home,” Johnnie says quickly.
Nemethane glances at the pelts stacked against the cabin. “You have been hunting in these woods all winter.”
Johnnie says nothing.
“There is a man among your people, a great hunter. He was caught with the salt boilers at Blue Licks only a moon ago. If he carries himself well, he will be adopted. But mark me, Tala — your people will feel the sting of the Shawnee when you plunge into our lands and take what is not freely offered.”
Johnnie hears the shift — your people. He is no longer counted among them.
“You mean Boone,” he says.
“I do. His walk in the woods may save him. I cannot speak for the men with him. I cannot even speak for you.”
In The Longhunt, Johnnie McIntyre is part of a band of longhunters who come across a traumatized young woman, Katie Campbell, who has fallen afoul of both Shawnee and rogue salt boilers. She finds herself hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, with only Johnnie’s promise to return her to civilization. Johnnie, himself has one foot in each civilization as he himself has spent time as an adoptee among the Shawnee.
The story burns slow, like a banked campfire — yet it came to me rapidly, as if told beside such a fire. One of my greatest joys in writing it was sinking into the expansive beauty of the Appalachian wilderness and the deep, vivid lore of Nature herself:
The light is slanted and amber, the air smelling of fermented persimmons — pungent and cidery when the first frost chills it, like a warning in Katie’s bones…
Before the first chill settles in, Katie finds a fairy ring beyond the horses’ paddock — almost perfectly circular, rimmed by toadstools as wide as powder‑keg hoops. Pale and luminous in the early dusk, they seem to glow.
She remembers her mother’s warning: “Never step in a fairy ring, or the fairy ones’ll steal ye awa’. Might come back — but never the same.”
Katie stands at the edge, staring into its hush, and wonders if that would be so terrible. She has already been stolen once. She has already been changed.
The Longhunt is complete, and now begins its journey toward publication. It is currently being presented to agents, and I’ll share updates as things unfold.