A novel to set the record straight on ginseng

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Please welcome guest author Jim Hamilton. Hamilton is an extension agent and county director with North Carolina State Cooperative Extension and adjunct professor at Appalachian State University. He has a PhD in forestry and teaches workshops on wild-simulated ginseng production each Fall in Boone. His first novel, The Last Entry, published in late 2019.

---

The forest floor is quiet and bare, now. The yellows and oranges long fallen from Autumn are being decomposed into the mulch that’ll serve as protection and feed for the coming Spring crop of perennial plants waiting just below the surface.

Most of the season’s roots now dried and sold

In the rich, mountain coves of the Appalachians, one particular species of these sleeping beauties will break the surface come early May. It’ll unfurl and flare out symmetrical prongs of serrated leaves in the understory below the maples & tulip-poplars to grab as much filtered light as it can—nourishing the gnarled, wrinkled tuber below-ground that’s become a prized trophy of veteran foragers who wander the hills each Fall in search of it.

If the deer haven’t nibbled if off by August, the unassuming, green berry pod of American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) will begin transforming into a crimson display that quickens the heart rate of those who hunt it, come opening day of ‘seng season.

A few diggers are skilled enough to stalk-hunt ginseng even into November, searching for its distinct, bare stem or one with a remaining, tattered leaf, fighting the inevitable senescence. But by December, most of the season’s roots have been dried and sold to registered dealers scattered up and down the byways of the Appalachians from the north Georgia foothills up into the Catskills of New York state.

Role in region’s export economy for three centuries

Throughout the harvest, buyers shuck out hundreds of thousands in cash to fill orders of cardboard barrels-full of the root, shipped to Hong Kong in preparation for the exchange of gifts and promises of health and wealth in the Chinese New Year.

Here in the mountains, the cash conversion from the cryptic plant pays for property taxes and Christmas stocking stuffers—maybe the down payment on a new vehicle for those diggers exceptionally skilled, or lucky, who have the fortitude to spend the days and miles needed to bring in a haul.

For three centuries, ginseng held an important but understated role in our export economy with Asia and became another element of the mythos springing forth from the hollers. After its discovery by a French Jesuit missionary in upstate New York in the early 1700s, it was gathered from the wild and shipped by the ‘tun’ to the formerly named Chinese port of Canton, becoming a domesticated commodity crop in Wisconsin in the late 1800s.

It takes 8 generations to qualify as ‘local’

But the under-shade-cloth cultivated ‘seng still doesn’t hold a candle to the wild stuff. As the price of wild ginseng crept up from a few dollars per pound in the early to mid-20^th century to an all-time high of $1,300 in 2013, its cultural currency skyrocketed, too.

By then, I had fallen hook, line, and sinker in love with the plant—and the stories I’d heard from those steeped in the tradecraft.

Full disclosure: I’m not a native mountain boy. As much as those who move to the mountains for the reasons we do would like to be, I’m not. We’re not. Never will be. Hell, my kids were born here, and they’ll never be considered local. It takes like 8 generations, a particular last name, and an historic killin’ or two to officially qualify, I think.

The discreet world of ginseng has now gone mainstream

But, I have the best job in the world. I get to work with all manner of clients who visit the Ag Office in Boone: the farmers, Christmas tree growers, second-homers, tourists, and locals alike.

By playing nice and taking genuine interest in the conservation of the plant, I’ve been “adopted”—or at least tolerated—by ginsengers who were taught the craft from earlier generations of Cornetts, Watsons, Greenes, and Trivettes. They’ve invited me to secret patches to let me dig with them and learn. And, I wear the scars earned by the tangles of greenbriar with as much pride as I have in the trophy root found on one of my first excursions, preserved in ‘shine. 

Though moonshine tends to capture the lion’s share of the lore and “pop-stereotype hype” of the rural mountains, a few seasons of TV shows like Smoky Mountain Money, Appalachian Outlaws and Filthy Riches brought the discreet world of ginseng into mainstream—with the bang and flourish of every typecast character in Vance’s Elegy.

6 years ago I began a novel to set the record straight on ginseng

Nat Geo & the History Channel should’ve been ashamed. The plant has, though, received billing in more honorable, yet minor roles in novels, stories, and poetry by southern authors like Ron Rash, David Joy, and Taylor Brown. “Ginseng Sullivan” still makes its rounds in bluegrass conclaves and even the Wu-Tang Clan gave a nod to its energy-giving qualities: “I’m like a sniper, hyper off the ginseng root…”

Six years ago I began a novel from a need to sort of set the record straight on the authenticity of this amazing forest medicinal plant with over 300 years of history that is as much an ingrained piece of the mountains as moonshine and bluegrass.

I’ve been writing technical articles for unreadable academic journals with audiences of a less than a dozen throughout my career. So, coming from a science and technical background, I can’t tell you how refreshing (and terrifying) it was to jump into the world of fiction.

For Appalachia, the place, and nature of the place, is key

You want a result, you make it up!  Granted, the base of peer review is just as harsh if you don’t get it “right.” Not that authenticity doesn’t matter with ANY writing, but for the story I wanted to tell, getting it right was a steep mountain to hike.

For Appalachia, the place, and the NATURE of the place as much or more so than the people, is especially important. The place is what makes the mountains so unique. Its deep forests captured the souls of poets, authors, and explorers with its mystique for centuries.

The best fiction set in Appalachia captures that mystique. And it’s a mystique that lends itself to those easy stereotypes—some true, others, not so much, despite the entertainment value. But it’s the PLACE surrounding the intersection of the cliché and the truth of the community that makes it even more mysterious, more harsh, more brutal—and more beautiful.

The understated, cryptic, beautiful plant

The Last Entry, its title referencing a character’s grandfather’s journal, is a coming-of-age homage to the ginseng subculture of the mountains. My hope, for the general reader—the person from the city or town who isn’t from the region—is that along with the human drama between its characters and the story itself, they learn something authentic about this understated, cryptic, and beautiful plant, and the forests & hollers that have entwined it with the culture of its people for over 300 years.

I’m an educator, so I snuck in as many teaching moments about the plant as I could. My hope for readers who come or came from Appalachia, who may have moved off the mountain or moved away from their families’ traditions, for whom huntin’ seng was just one of those things they “did with Paw Paw growing up,” is that they are reunited for a moment with the magic of the place to which their destiny of birthright rooted them.

The Last Entry was published in 2019. It received a nomination for the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award and was a quarterfinalist in the BookLife Prize. It’s available at a few Indie bookshops and on Amazon.

More articles on ginseng:

Ginseng, the curious rootstock(Opens in a new browser tab)

Here’s some yarbs the women got(Opens in a new browser tab)