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Description
Join us on Tuesday, May 6th, from 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM at the Asheville Museum of History (AMoH) for a special History Hour program: Imagining the Face Behind History's Footnotes, with local author Dale Neal. Light refreshments will be available.
Dale Neal will introduce attendees to Helena Ostenaco Timberlake and how he imagined her life with his novel, The Woman with the Stone Knife.
In Neal's words:
I was intrigued by a footnote in the exhibit “Emissaries of Peace,” based on the Memoirs of Lt. Henry Timberlake, and curated by the Museum of the Cherokee. Timberlake led a remarkable life, visiting the Cherokee in 1762 and escorting the tribe’s chiefs on two voyages to the court of King George III. In 1786, years after Timberlake’s death in a London debtor’s prison, a woman calling herself Helena Ostenaco Timberlake came forward, claiming both the names of the white soldier and a Cherokee chief. Who was this mystery woman? I had to write a novel, The Woman with The Stone Knife, to imagine her life in the cracks of history.
About the Speaker:
Dale Neal is the author of recent novels Kings of Coweetsee and The Woman with the Stone Knife. His previous novels include Appalachian Book of the Dead, The Half-Life of Home, and Cow Across America, are all set in the storied Blue Ridge Mountains. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Arts & Letters, Carolina Quarterly, Marlboro Review, Crescent Review and many other literary journals.
A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, he has been awarded fellowships to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hambidge Center and the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland. One of the last surviving American journalists, he was a prize-winning writer for the Asheville Citizen-Times, having covered entrepreneurs, police, local government, religion, arts, books and Cherokee culture. He currently teaches fiction at the Lenoir-Rhyne University Graduate Center in Asheville.
A lifelong native of North Carolina, he makes his home in Thomas Wolfe’s old hometown of Asheville with his wife and dogs. When his nose is not buried in some book, he’s bound to be out on the trails of the surrounding Blue Ridge mountains.
Tickets:
$10 General Admission / FREE for Asheville Museum of History (AMoH) members. We also have no-cost, community-funded tickets available. We want our events to be accessible to as many people as possible. If you are able, please consider making a donation along with your ticket purchase. These donations are placed in our Community Fund, which allows us to offer tickets at no cost to those who could not attend otherwise. Tickets are limited for in-person lectures, so don't miss your opportunity to secure a spot!
Location:
The historic Smith-McDowell House, home to the Asheville Museum of History (AMoH), 283 Victoria Road, Asheville, NC, 28801
For questions about this event, email education@ashevillehistory.org or call the Asheville Museum of History (AMoH) at 828-253-9231.
Date & Time
Tue, May 6, 2025 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Venue Details
Asheville Museum of History
283 Victoria RoadAsheville, North Carolina 28801
