This month is Woman’s History Month, and our most recent books have something special in common: all five titles we published in 2024 were by women.
In the Spring, we released the fourth (and final) story in the Stratford Oaks Tales by Dr. Suzanne Mellow-Irwin. The Stratford Oaks Tales is a series of books about the good life for the animals at Stratford Oaks Farm in North Carolina. Written for older kids, The Tale of Bella is the story of a wild mustang from the American Southwest, that was relocated to Stratford Oaks, here in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Through a career in education bridging elementary classes to the university level, Dr. Suzanne Mellow-Irwin has served in various positions: classroom teacher, curriculum supervisor, superintendent of schools and university professor. Educated at Trinity College in Washington, D.C., she holds a doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She lives at Stratford Oaks Farm in Sparta, North Carolina, where her stories have endeared her to “children of all ages.”
This Summer, we published a three-volume treasury of stories, poems, and illustrations from the pen and imagination of the iconic naturalist, artist and author, Emma Bell Miles (1879–1919), describing life in her beloved, southern Appalachian mountains:
- The Spirit of the Mountains and Select Works of Emma Bell Miles
- Our Southern Birds and the Fountain Square Conversations by Emma Bell Miles
- Stories of the Mountains – Selected Short Stories by Emma Bell Miles
Miles was a wife and mother whose poems and short stories appeared in national magazines in the early 1900s. Her adult life was filled with poverty and health issues. She endured a troubled marriage. She was interested in women’s rights and suffrage. Her work reflects those themes, but through her writing, she also asserts great and positive and complex ideas- both, in her descriptions of interpersonal situations and of the natural world.
In the Fall, we published Family Favorites Cookbook, by Eloise C. Halsey. It is an accumulation of recipes, beloved by the author’s family, through the years.
Author and domestic culinary expert with over 80 years of experience, Eloise is a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother who lives in the Blue Ridge mountains. Born in Mulberry Gap, Tennessee, and raised in nearby Rose Hill, Virginia, she met her husband Ron at Berea College and they raised their own family in Kingsport, Tennessee. They lived in Kansas City and Greensboro, North Carolina, before retiring and moving to Ron’s boyhood home in Alleghany County, North Carolina.
All of these books, and several others by woman authors, can be ordered online at https://starroutebooks.com.
