All That's Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir

Sure, you’ve read memoirs about Appalachia before. And yes, you’ve read memoirs about people who feel like fish out of water at Ivy League colleges. But you haven’t read All That’s Unseen by Emilee Hackney. Read it and you’ll learn what it’s like to embrace Pentecostalism for young love that then goes very awry; to be disrespected due to where you are from; and to truly love an unyielding but beautiful landscape. I also appreciate seeing a Trump rally through her eyes, and that she then researches what Trump did after he was in office that did not help her home region. The truth is that whenever someone asks me why I love a book, the answer is, “The writing is amazing.” That’s true of All That’s Unseen and so far it’s my number one read of 2026.