Author Barbara O’Connor was born in Greenville, South Carolina, and grew up amidst the beauty and mystery of the iconic Smoky Mountains. After pursuing her post-graduate studies in California and living in New England for 26 years, O’Connor returned to the Appalachian region and settled in Asheville, North Carolina, where she uses her childhood memories of gardening, playing in the creek, and searching for salamanders as inspiration for her novels. Although the town of Colby, the main setting of the novel Wish, is fictionalized, O’Connor draws on her love of the language, culture, and cuisine of the Appalachian region to create a strong sense of place in the narrative and honor a culture that some have dismissed as being primitive, coarse, and uncivilized (“About Barbara O’Connor.” Barbara O’Connor, 2023).

Covering 13 states and over 200,000 square miles of land, the Appalachian Mountain range is one of the oldest in the world, and the people who live in the mountains’ shadow have developed a rich cultural heritage that reflects the history of the region. Despite the majestic, biodiverse mountains, the Appalachian regions have come to be synonymous with negative cultural stereotypes, some of which have been reinforced by popular culture, such as the controversial book

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