Recent Blog Posts

Local author A. C. “Carl” Ward’s latest novel was hundreds of years in the making. “You can’t be from North Carolina and not be a storyteller.” At least that’s what local resident A. C. “Carl” Ward believes. It’s easy to understand what he means, though. From the glittering beaches of Topsail Island to the mountains of Asheville to bustling cities like Charlotte, the Tar Heel State has it all. Its idyllic setting is immortalized in song (“Carolina in My Mind” by James Taylor), books (“Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens) and films (David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet”), putting Ward in good company with his newest novel, For Twenty Dollars in Gold: A Story of the Civil War. The novel is based on a true story

How do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been? Whether Native Americans (to use that title) or immigrants (as nearly everyone in this country are a descendant), we owe our personal history to those that preceded each generation.  We may all have some smart and successful people as ancestors. However, I’m willing to bet there is at least one branch or character in each of our family trees that was a little notorious and the family chooses to ignore them. Sometimes, those bad tree limbs fall away or long forgotten. Perhaps their actions were so horrible or successful they could not be ignored. Either way, reality tells us the family tree has some interesting branches stretching over time. The American

Question 1: What roles define you in life? Answer 1: Wow! That’s a deep one!  First, I would say I grew up in a Christian home and as such was regularly in church each Sunday morning, afternoon service, and Sunday night service. When I say Christian home, my mother was the enforcer of the church requirements. My Dad was a truck driver at that time and he was a long-haul driver and often away from home on Sundays. I sometimes wonder if he was gone on Sundays on purpose.  That foundation meant a lot to me as it gave me both a place to learn and a place to socialize. I believe that by my 16th birthday, I had read the entire Bible 21 times;

My story began in the summer between my 12th  and 13th birthday, or the summer of 1961. As usual for me, the weekend following the end of the school year meant traveling to Southeastern North Carolina to the Ward (Dad’s side of the family) and Thompson (Mom’s side of the family) farms. It was during such a summer that I discovered a staircase hidden behind a closet door in the Ward family farmhouse. On one Sunday afternoon, with nearly everyone catching an afternoon nap after church and a big farm lunch, I climbed the staircase to find another door. Behind that second door, I found an attic which was not unlike many attics. I saw old furniture, wooden boxes, several hanging framed portraits, and clothes hanging