"We walked out onto a side porch, with woven-seat rocking chairs strewn across it, to look out at the hills that were literally ablaze with color—reds and yellows were painted across the promontories, with amber and orange hues specked the bluffs. The spectacular view all the way to the peak of the distant Frye Mountain reminded us of why so many chose to visit this wilderness area during the fall color season."

But the little mountain hamlet of Bryson City, North Carolina, offers more than dazzling vistas. For Walt Larimore, a young "flatlander" physician setting up his first practice, the town presents its peculiar challenges as well. Schooled in the latest medical technology, the eager doctor—his wife, Barb, and two-year-old daughter, Kate, in tow—is about to discover that there are some things in rural practice for which medical school just hadn’t prepared him. But he’s about to learn. His patients will often be his best teachers, and his classroom will range from hospital corridors and smelly barns to homey kitchens and mountain streams.

With the winsomeness of a James Herriott book, Best of Bryson City Tales sweeps you into a world of colorful characters, the texture of Smoky Mountain life, and the warmth, humor, quirks, and struggles of a small country town. It’s a world where the family doctor is also the emergency physician, the coroner, and the obstetrician, and where wilderness medicine is part of the job, search-and-rescue calls in the national forest are a way of life, and the next patient just may be somebody’s livestock or pet. And it is the place where the practice of medicine will forever shape Dr. Larimore’s practice of life and faith.

Sharing the joys, heartaches, frustrations, and rewards of rural mountain medical practice, Best of Bryson City Tales is a tender and insightful chronicle of a young man’s rite of passage from medical student to family physician. Laughter and adventure await you here, and lessons learned from the strengths, foibles, and simple faith of Bryson City’s unforgettable residents.