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Joe Nunley: Walk the Dark Hills

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2024 at 2:33 pm

Local author Joe Nunley lives in Gruetli-Laager with his wife, Ann, and their beloved golden retriever, Knox. His newest novel, Walk the Dark Hills, set in Tracy City in the 1890’s, is now available on Amazon.

BETH RINER
Contributor
Local author Joe Nunley drew from his experiences working in Grundy County mines to write his newest novel, which debuted on Amazon in early December.
Walk the Dark Hills is historical fiction set in the bustling Tracy City of the 1890s before convict labor was abolished.
A lifelong Grundy countian, Nunley took up writing as a hobby after his retirement as superintendent of Grundy County Schools in 2003.
Nunley grew up in Coalmont, graduated from Grundy County High School in 1972, and did a three-year stint in the Navy on the USS Independence before returning home.
“I love Grundy County, and I love the people of Grundy County, especially the original people who settled it and the descendants of those people,” Nunley said. “I’m really a part of it, and that’s where my heart is.”
His love of history prompted him to major in it at Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga after he left the Navy. In between college semesters and during the summers, he worked in two mines on Daus Mountain near Palmer.
“I ran what was called a motor to pull coal out of the mines to where we loaded it,” he explained. “It was a heavy steel construction, low to the ground, with multiple batteries that had to be recharged after the shift. There’s an example of one in Whitwell at a mining equipment display near the highway.”
He combined his knowledge of mining with his historian’s keen interest in Tracy City, once the largest town between Murfreesboro and Chattanooga because of the coal industry, to develop the plot for Walk the Dark Hills.
The 282-page novel follows the story of Cade Schild, wrongfully convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to work for life in a coal mine in Grundy County. He lives in the stockade—a place that Nunley’s mother recalled hearing about from her grandparents when she was a little girl.
“They would hear the screams when they beat the convicts,” Nunley said. “They had what was called a task—each convict had to load so much coal each day. If they didn’t get their task, they were beaten. It was terrible. She said they would go into their houses because they would hear the screams.”
Although the book is fiction, Nunley took care to keep it historically accurate.
“The people who know the history will tell you it’s pretty accurate,” Nunley said, “but it’s all fiction—everything, both the narrative and the dialogue.”
Nunley began writing the book shortly after retiring but found himself putting it aside to work on writing and other projects.
“Almost three years ago, I got it out, dusted it off, and went to work on it,” he said. “I rearranged it and did all kinds of stuff to it, and then I submitted it to this publisher, and they accepted it.”
The publisher, Moonshine Cove Publishing based in South Carolina, accepted the novel last summer, but it was not published until December because of their schedule. Published under the name B.J. Nunley, Walk the Dark Hills is available on Amazon—it’s $7.99 for Kindle or $21 for paperback.
Nunley is already hard at work doing research for his next novel, which will focus on the union struggles in Grundy County during the 50s and 60s.

The Marion Tribune – February 1, 2024