Prison Camp Road

“Prison Camp Road” is a novella set in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains near the cotton mill village of Hildreth, North Carolina in Coldwell County. The time frame is mainly during the late 40's, 50's and early 60's.

All the main characters are from three families who live on Prison Camp Road. Cassie Miller is the plain talking mother of four girls and much of the story is told through her wit, humor, the anguish of losing a baby to the polio epidemic and her Fuller Brush selling husband to “the hell horse.”

Cletus, Junior lives across the road from Cassie and has visions of the Sunbeam girl all grown up and pythons and redwood trees. After an accident in his dads pick-up Cletus describes his face as “sore as 10 boils on the butt.”

When Sam Collins, the new mill superintendent, and his family move in it changes Cassie's life forever.

Her world is bordered by Mother Nature's Bounty of Queen Anne’s Lace, fragrant mimosa trees and wild lilies as well as the clanging of the bell from the prison camp- just across the valley where. cook smoke rises.

Elizabeth Burgess was born in Little Rock, Arkansas but grew up in the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. She graduated from Appalachian University and was a Writing Fellow at UNC-Pembroke. During her 30 year teaching career she taught in N.C., California, and for the DODDSchools in Schweinfurt, Nurnberg, and Baumholder, Germany and Yokusuka, Japan.

Her poetry has been published in several North Carolina anthologies including a Russian-English anthology, “Earth and Soul” Her short stories have appeared in “The Book of American Traditions” and “Hungry for Home”

“Prison Camp Road”is her first novel. She is currently at work on her second novel, "A Day In Casilla”, set in Little Rock, Arkansas.