WRITING THE GREAT WAR: RON RASH AND TERRY ROBERTS: Discuss World War I, the North Carolina German Internment Camp, and the Historical Novel

In May of 1917, the inhabitants of the sleepy resort town of Hot Springs, North Carolina, were shocked and dismayed to learn that the local Mountain Park Hotel was being converted into an internment camp for Germans. Due to the United States entering World War I in April of 1917, business at this up...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:North Carolina literary review 2014-06 (23), p.30-47
Main Author: Vernon, Zackary
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
American literature
Biographies
Concentration camps
Consciousness
Germans
Historical fiction
History
Hotels & motels
Interviews
Novels
Plot (Narrative)
Rash, Ron
Roberts, Terry
Southern literature
War
Welty, Eudora (1909-2001)
World War I
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Summary:In May of 1917, the inhabitants of the sleepy resort town of Hot Springs, North Carolina, were shocked and dismayed to learn that the local Mountain Park Hotel was being converted into an internment camp for Germans. Due to the United States entering World War I in April of 1917, business at this upscale resort had stymied, and the hotel's owner, James Edwin Rumbough, was all too happy to receive the 1,500 dollars per month that the government offered him to lease the Mountain Park Hotel. [...]many of the internees were highly educated and well-trained professionals, such as the ship's high-ranking officers and the members of a world-class orchestra. The internment camp at Hot Springs provided a stage on which disparate social groups and classes collided, bringing about what was, at the time, an unprecedented cultural exchange between Europeans and Southern Appalachians.1 In an almost unbelievable coincidence, this little-known chapter of North Carolina history became the backdrop for two novels published in 2012:
ISSN:1063-0724
2165-1809