In the fall of 1945, eight children, all brothers and sisters, vanished from a small rental house in Morganton, Georgia. The oldest was ten and the youngest was a newborn. They were taken by mule and wagon to a shack on a remote mountain in the Blue Ridge foothills of Fannin County, up where it hugs the North Carolina line. For the next four years they would live mostly alone, without mother or father, roaming the mountains and valleys of what had been Cherokee Territory, scouring for food and scrambling to take care of themselves and each other. Few people ever knew what happened. Over time the children themselves became silent about their childhood, and their story was buried.

One day in 2015 the children, long grown and many of them now grandparents, began to reveal the story to Janisse Ray, award-winning author of the best-selling memoir, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.

The Woods family wove a sometimes painful, sometimes jubilant, and always astounding revelation of their subsistence in an Appalachian wilderness. Had that not happened, this remarkable story of abandonment, survival, and the incredible resilience of eight children might have been forever lost. Janisse Ray is known for her literary nonfiction, characterized by rich lyricism, knowledge of the natural world, and sincere embrace of the ecology of the heart. Based on a true story, The Woods of Fannin County is Ray’s first novel.

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