This is the only novel written by Horace Kephart. Kephart is famous for his books on woodcraft and camping. His book of that title has remained in print for over one-hundred years. His “Our Southern Highlanders” still reigns as the premier work about the people of the Smoky Mountains. Millions revere him for championing the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Less well known is this work of fiction that Kephart wrote depicting life in the Smoky Mountains. Kephart spent eighteen years gathering notes, composing and revising his novel; then in 1928 submitted it for publication. It was rejected. Two years later, Kephart was killed in an auto accident, and his novel lay ignored. Regard for Kephart, however, continued to grow. His family submitted his draft for publication in 2009, and eighty-one years after its completion, “Smoky Mountain Magic” has finally come to print.

In the novel, the main character, John Cabarrus returns to Kittuwa (present-day Bryson City, NC) in the Smoky Mountains after an absence of fifteen years. He sets up camp in the wilderness and begins panning the brooks and streams for minerals, arousing some suspicion from people who live in the area. He meets Marian Wentworth and rescues her horse whose foot got caught in a crevice in the ground.

Marian gradually pieces together what others have told her about a young boy whose family had come to grief fifteen years earlier. As her encounters with Cabarrus increase, she realizes that he is that boy. Cabarrus is now twenty-eight. Marian and Cabarrus become friends. Someone in Kittuwa had defrauded the Cabarrus family a long time ago and caused the young Cabarrus to flee when he was thirteen.

Kephart develops his storyline in an interesting way and crafts an adventuresome story. There’s a wrong that had been done to innocent and helpless people and a desire of Cabarrus to rectify the wrong without himself doing wrong. There’s a budding romance between Cabarrus and Marian. And there is much local color about the inhabitants of Kittuwa and the surrounding mountains and vivid descriptions of the pristine forest on the mountains.

Kephart does a fine job of capturing the mannerisms and speech patterns of the folks living in the mountains and of some Cherokee Indians who took refuge in the mountains to escape the forced relocation of the tribe to the Western Frontier. Kephart develops a good plot explaining the dilemma Cabarrus is in and how Cabarrus works his way out of it. The novel ends with Cabarrus and Marian very much attracted to each other and with Cabarrus’ future looking good as a result of his hard work and good common sense. If anyone is tired of the wanton sexuality in today’s novels, you won’t see any of that here. ( )