Melody Warnick and her husband were on their sixth move as a married couple when they pulled the moving van up to the rental house they would occupy in Blacksburg, VA. As upwardly mobile professionals, they had followed jobs from city to city. Along the way daughters were born and their family grew. Melody, a writer, began to think about the permanence and stability of her own childhood and that maybe it would be a good thing to give her daughters, too.
But what makes a place home? Where should they stop moving and say, “This is home”? They came to Blacksburg because Melody’s husband landed a job teaching at Virginia Tech. Melody was put off by the town at first, surrounded by dreary clouds and rain and mountains. She decides to make the best of it, and embarks on a series of experiments designed to help her feel more connected with the town where she lives, Blacksburg.
In an odd personal twist, I grew up just outside of Blacksburg, and moved to a flat part of the state as a young teen. How I pined for the Blue Ridge Mountains, the lower humidity, and a population who didn’t think I had a hick accent! For this reason Melody’s book was of special interest to me; would her experiments fail and her opinion besmirch my hometown?
Melody Warnick is a talented writer and she has approached this subject in a thorough journalistic style, while keeping the text engaging.
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