Why I Wrote Success in Hill Country

Success in Hill Country is an example of what happens when opportunity and something you love to do intersect.

For several years, I wrote a bi-monthly column for the Bristol Herald Courier, mostly about topics related to Appalachia. I  met a lot of people as a result. Don Green, executive director of the Napoleon Hill Foundation,  was one of them. He liked my writing style and offered me the opportunity to publish with NHF, a non-profit organization that publishes millions of books and CDs annually that are based on the principles of global bestselling motivational writer and native Appalachian Napoleon Hill, who was born in Wise County, Virginia. Hill was an influence on most of the people in this book--as he continues to be for people all over the world--because of  his now-famous maxim: "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve."

I knew I wanted to write something that could inspire young people, particularly those like me from the mountains or otherwise rural places that might be all but forgotten. I remember as a teenager thinking about what I would do in life and feeling convinced that to make something of myself I'd have to leave home, that there was no success to be found here in the hills and hollers, the farthest place imaginable from where Important Things were Happening, places like Los Angeles and New York City. I loved the mountains and everything about our way of life (and still do): the way we talk, our seasonal work like harvesting tobacco and making molasses, the old-timey hymns we sang in church. But I saw nothing resembling our way of life on television or in the magazines that came in the mail. The one television show we could relate to, even though it was set during the Depression, was The Waltons, because it was about a rural family who sounded a little like us and lived in the mountains. (I'm proud to say the creator of that show, Earl Hamner, read this book.)

I was a reader and dreamed of being a writer, and I wish I could see my young, impressionable self with a book like this one in my hands. I like to think it would have rocked my world to read Adriana Trigiani's story about how Big Stone Gap, VA shaped her as a writer, or to read about Lee Smith's love of her Grundy mountains. I like to think that Carroll Dale's story of making it all the way to the NFL from Wise County would have put notions into my head about what a girl from Lee County might do.I like to think that J.B. Hill's (Napoleon Hill's grandson) story about deciding he would fulfill his dream of being a doctor in his forties (after retiring from the military) would have convinced me that I didn't necessarily have to choose one dream. I could have them all.

I still believe that.

Now,  I just want to put this book into the hands of as many young people as I can, particularly those who are graduating. Because it's more than a book about how to be successful. It's time spent with people who can tell you not only what they did to get there but why where you come from is just as important as where you're going.

And that's probably the most important lesson of all.

Postscript: For more about Success in Hill Country, see Jack Lail's blog titled "An Appalachian Stereotype You May Have Missed"