Every once in a while, I find myself engrossed in a book that suddenly delivers my ignorance to me on a silver platter.

Haywood County hadn’t logged a coronavirus-related death in the better part of a year. But since Dec. 19, 2023, it has seen five.  

The Cherokee Indian Police Department has determined the identity of the person whose remains were found in an open field Tuesday, Jan. 2, but it’s not disclosing any information about the individual beyond that the person was male.

We hoped he’d die in his sleep, that we’d find him curled up in the bed in that old, familiar way, having slipped as comfortably and naturally from this dimension to the next as a river flows into the sea. 

Across the state, there has been an increase in firearm-related hunting incidents involving serious injury and fatalities. 

The cell phone erupted to life on the nightstand in the pitch-black bedroom. It was 9:30 a.m. in North Carolina. But, for my girlfriend, Sarah, and I, we were three hours behind in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

My birthday is tomorrow. When my dad reached this same age, he had 10 days left to live. I remember the day we lost him as well as I remember any other day of my life.

Stepping outside the small log cabin, I took a moment to collect my thoughts. Vast farm fields and ancient dirt in the rural countryside outside of Goldsboro, the cool air of an impending fall was felt with a sense of relief in a place where heat and humidity reign supreme. 

A South Carolina woman fell to her death from a steep cliff along the Blue Ridge Parkway Saturday, Sept. 23.

The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office has applied for a grant to fund a Medication Assisted Treatment program in the county’s detention center. This comes after the Jackson County Detention Center has had five deaths in less than eight years, two of which occurred in 2022.