Martin Co. native to discuss latest book
A Martin County native is coming back home to Williamston to talk about her third book. Leah Weiss, who was born in Williamston, left North Carolina around the age of 10. She spent the rest of her adolescence in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. This will be Weiss’ second time to visit Martin Memorial in recent years to discuss her books. In 2021, she visited to talk about her second book All the Little Hopes, which takes place in a town much like Williamston — the fictional Riverton — during World War II. Weiss said Williamston’s historic German POW camp inspired All the Little Hopes. Wiess considers herself “southern by grace.” “My roots run deep in the flat lands of North Carolina,” she said. Her first book, If the Creek Don’t Rise, set in Appalachia, sold over 100,000 copies. Weiss began writing full-time after retiring from a 24-year career as Executive Assistant to the headmaster at Virginia Episcopal School in 2015, becoming a best-selling author late in life. Ann Phelps, who retired as branch librarian at Martin Memorial in 2023 after 25 years, is now chair of The Friends of Martin Memorial Library. (The Friends of Martin Memorial Library