Betsy Reeder

Betsy Reeder grew up in then-rural Maryland and studied ecology and writing at schools in California and Maryland. She fell in love with Appalachia at age seventeen on a high school trip and returned to the mountains many times before finally moving to Central Appalachia in 2007, a dream come true. At that time, she left a teaching career to take a job as a biologist. In her spare time, she explored: hiking, birdwatching, and dog walking. Although she aspired to be a poet, as she learned about the New River’s landscape and history, seeds germinated that led to the writing of her first novel, Madam’s Creek (Canterbury House Publishing, 2017). A sequel, Broomstraw Ridge, followed in the fall of 2019. The final novel, Salt in Boiling Water, completed the trilogy in 2021.These stories center around the lives and loves of characters caught up in vivid events of the Civil War and its aftermath. The next novel (2023), Tupper's Coins, is set mostly in South Carolina. It is a riveting tale based on the experiences of the author's ancestors during and after the siege of Charleston during the Civil War. Also published in 2023 is Broadus Unbound, a biographic collection of nineteenth-century letters written to and by John A. Broadus, a beloved and influential preacher, writer, and teacher claimed by Baptists as one of their brightest stars. Another novel appeared in 2024--Beyond Buffalo. It is a gripping tale based on the 1972 Buffalo Creek Disaster, which destroyed sixteen West Virginia communities and killed 125 people on a terrifying February morning.