'Slicker Than That' in Madison County

By D.G. Martin | Aug 20, 2012

"Amazing," I told my friend the other day. "Three of this year's best North Carolina novels are set up in Madison County, just north of Asheville along the Tennessee line."

"Interesting," my friend said, but his eyes were glazing over. He wanted to talk politics, not books.

Still I continued, "And in each of them the county sheriff is an important character."

My friend perked up. "Was his name Ponder?"

I explained the sheriff characters in these books were fictional and all different.

He said that it would be hard to make up a more interesting character than E.Y. Ponder, who was elected Madison County sheriff in 1952 and served, with one four-year interruption, until 1986.

I told him that it would be hard to be more interesting than the sheriff characters in the three new books.

In Ron ...

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