Sponsored by Dinsmore and Shohl, LLP.
Drowned Town explores the multigenerational impact caused by
the loss of home and illuminates the joys and sorrows of a group of people
bound together by western Kentucky's Land Between the Lakes and the lakes that
lie on either side of it. The linked stories are rooted in a landscape forever
altered by the mid-twentieth-century impoundment of the Tennessee and
Cumberland Rivers and the seizing of property under the power of eminent domain
to create a national recreation area on the narrow strip of land between the
lakes. The massive federal land and water projects completed in quick
succession were designed to serve the public interest by providing
hydroelectric power, flood control, and economic progress for the region—at
great sacrifice for those who gave up their homes, livelihoods, towns, and
history.
The narrative follows two women whose lives are shaped by
their friendship and connection to the place, and their stories go back and
forth in time to show how the creation of the lakes both healed and hurt the
people connected to them. In the process, the stories emphasize the importance
of sisterhood and family, both blood and created, and how we cannot separate
ourselves from our places in the world.
Jayne Moore Waldrop, a western Kentucky native, is
the author of Retracing My Steps, a finalist in the 2018 New
Women's Voices Chapbook Contest, and Pandemic Lent: A Season in Poems.
Waldrop's work has appeared in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers,
Still: The Journal, Appalachian Review, New Madrid Review, Deep South Magazine,
New Limestone Review, Women Speak, and other literary journals.