Whitfield County native's novels focus on Southern history

Mar. 30—Kimberly Brock's first novel "The River Witch" was an Amazon best seller and earned her the Georgia Author of the Year award from the Georgia Writers Association.

Her second and latest novel, "The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare," is also a best seller and has received great reviews for the Whitfield County native.

Both are set in the South and touch on elements of Southern history. Brock's first novel was with a small press, but her second novel was published by Harper Collins in New York City, one of the big five publishers.

"I love regional fiction, Southern fiction," Brock said. "I love family stories. History is a big deal to my dad (former Whitfield County Board of Commissioners chairman Mike Babb). It was a big deal in my family. and that all comes together in my writing."

A graduate of Northwest Whitfield High School, Brock spent a year at Shorter College as a theater major. She returned to Dalton and gained a degree in elementary education from the University of West Georgia through its satellite program at Dalton State College.

"I did my student teaching at Fort Hill (elementary school)," she said.

Her husband Daniel, who is from Dalton, got a job with Microsoft, and the couple moved to the state of Washington in the 1990s.

"I was a teacher at a private school for students with neurological and behavioral issues," she said. "After we started having children, I stayed home as a mom and raised three children and started to write. My two oldest children, who are now a college graduate and at UGA (the University of Georgia), were toddlers. I started writing when they were taking naps."

Her first novel is set on the Georgia coast.

"When I wrote my first novel, the internet was still a little new," she said. "It was like having a library at home. I did a lot of online research for that book. I also relied on travel I had done over the years."

Her latest novel touches on the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

Founded in 1585 on Roanoke Island, in what is now Dare County, North Carolina, the colony was troubled from the beginning. The colony's governor, John White, returned to England to gather more supplies. But because of an ongoing war with Spain, he was not able to return until 1590. He found the colony abandoned and was unable to find the colonists. Their fate has been the subject of speculation and research for more than four centuries.

"It is based on the Dare Stones, the first of which was discovered in Edenton, North Carolina, in 1937," Brock said of her latest novel.

The Dare Stones are a series of stones that appeared to have been engraved with messages from survivors of the Lost Colony. The stones were found in North Carolina and North Georgia in the late 1930s and 1940s. Most of the messages appeared to have been written by Eleanor Dare, the daughter of John White, with the first one supposedly written to him. She was pregnant when they left England and gave birth to the first child of English parents born in North America, a daughter named Virginia Dare. Brenau University in Gainesville has a collection of 48 Dare Stones.

"The first one is a bit of a question," Brock said. "It is the only one whose authenticity hasn't been conclusively proven or disproven."

The remaining stones are generally believed to be hoaxes.

"I really ignore them and just start with the first stone," Brock said. "After that, I move her (Eleanor Dare) around the way I think she would have moved."

That journey takes Dare from North Carolina into Northern Georgia and eventually down into what is now Fulton County.

"It's historical fiction because it starts with real historical events," Brock said. "But it's also speculative fiction because I invent several generations of women descended from Eleanor Dare."

Now living in Georgia, Brock said she is working on a third novel tentatively scheduled to come out in 2024. It, too, will be published by Harper Collins.

"It's set around Cumberland Island," she said. "I don't have a title yet. It's a bit of a ghost story. That's all I can say right now."

She said the success of her novels has been exciting.

"I've done book tours. I just recently was interviewed by the History Channel (for an episode of 'History's Greatest Mysteries'), which was a lot of fun. I've really been having a blast," she said.