Ridge Running

From an early curiosity, Chris Wohlwend fashioned a half century working in newspapers and magazines. After landing a part-time newspaper job while a student at the University of Tennessee in 1965, he went on to publications in Miami, Charlotte, Louisville, Dallas, Kansas City, and Atlanta. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, and many other publications. As an editor, he was involved in work that won several national awards. In "Ridge Running," Wohlwend explores his early years in Knoxville, of the sometimes hard-scrabble existence of his parents and grandparents as they dealt with the Great Depression and World War II, and how that shaped him. Along the way, he introduces the Appalachian characters that he ran around with: pew pals from the Baptist church, high-school accomplices in girl-chasing, chicken-stealing adolescents from the wrong side of the ridge. There are absurdities and tragedies, drug-fueled follies and calamities during the high-stakes tumult of college during the Sixties. Readers will be introduced to moonshiners, preachers and private detectives, movie-makers, alligators, bank robbers, carnies, abortionists, prostitutes, a Playmate of the Year, bookies, society ladies, philanderers, habitués of cockfights, and union organizers. The journey is sometimes funny, sometimes fraught with danger - but it is always interesting.