34 | September/October 2019
F E A T U R E
BY CATHERINE PRITCHARD
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
MATTHEW WONDERLY
BOOKS ABOUT
FAYETTEVILLE
Bruce Daws, local historian and director
of the Fayetteville Area Transportation
and Local History Museum
W
W
ho wrote the book on
Fayetteville?
Lots of people.
A library of books
about Fayetteville would be heavy on
history and light on fiction. e city
hasn't been the primary setting for
many novels or short stories, although
there are exceptions.
Chief among them is Charles W.
Chesnutt, who wrote acclaimed fiction
in the late 1800s and early 1900s
about African American life in the
Reconstruction-era South - including
Fayetteville, where he lived for more
than a decade aer the Civil War. He
eventually moved north and became a
lawyer, an entrepreneur and a political
activist but he returned repeatedly
to the South in his fiction, which was
published by such notable magazines at
the Atlantic Monthly and then in book
form.
In his writings, he called Fayetteville
Patesville. But the actual location is
clear from both his descriptions and
his personal history. e library at
Fayetteville State University is named
for Chesnutt.
