The Living Room Bed: Birthing, Healing, and Dying in Traditional Appalachia

Shifflett, Peggy Ann

255 pages; Waynesboro, VA:  McClung Company, 2019.  

In her book, The Living Room Bed: Birthing, Healing, and Dying in Traditional Appalachia, Shifflett uses the "living room" bed as a symbol of important stages in the Appalachian family life cycle. The "living room" bed provided the warmest place in the home for children to be born, the sick and injured to heal, and the sick and elderly to linger until death. The reader learns much of the folklore surrounding birth, healing, and dying in the context of Shifflett's own experiences along with personal stories shared by folks who grew up along the Appalachian Mountains from Grayson County to Rockingham County, Virginia. Some interviews were conducted with folk from West Virginia and Kentucky.