Kentuckiana Roads

Sound Bite

In an eccentric travel book about America's flyover middle, a cynical old curmudgeon invites us on a humorous road trip historical photos and loony adventures included.The man who bought the town of Story, Indiana, and its 19th-century inn, he highlights the historical landmarks and shares tales of the diverse folks who populate the region.

About the Book

Nestled discreetly along the border between the placid farmland and the hillbilly hills left by the last Ice Age in greater Kentucky - Indiana - Ohio, a specific culture has evolved in America's heartland. Actually, several contrasting cultures that overlap but rarely mix. Illustrating his narrative with historic photos, the author describes how this area became what it is today, a land of clapboard churches, limestone quarries, manufactured homes, Harley Davidson rallies, caves, distilleries, meth labs and gun stores, wine festivals and the bed-and-breakfast crowd.

Kentuckiana Roads is more than a review of Hoosier history. Rick Hofstetter offers a witty, sardonic, and unapologetic story of life from the driver's seat of America's flyover middle. If flyover America is the “Bible Belt,” Hofstetter declares that Kentuckiana is its buckle, boasting ecclesiastical treasures as well as monuments to human hubris. The book highlights weird religious groups who populated this region, including the Harmonists, Owenites, Amish, Mennonites, Pentecostals, snake-handlers, backwoods preachers who gather their brethren for a "blessing of the bikes" (Harleys), and, of course, German Catholics. This book is Rick’s personal journey as a freethinker navigating its deeply ingrained culture.

On the secular front, he takes us exploring—to caves, wineries, distilleries, and grand hotels. This is not just a memoir or a travelogue, it’s an introduction to the social conditions, politics, and rural landscapes of 21st-century Brown County, Indiana, and beyond, guided by a voice that is both curmudgeonly and super intelligent.

At the center of the narrative is the historic town of Story, Indiana, a place Hofstetter and his former partner, Frank Mueller, saved from becoming a ghost town. They transformed its "Vernacular" style buildings—a general store, an old grain mill, and a dairy barn—into the celebrated Story Inn, a charming B&B hosting weddings, monthly wine dinners, and even providing accommodations for horses. The inn becomes a unique crossroads where disparate American tribes intersect: horsemen arriving from the Hoosier National Forest, leather-clad Harley riders, and aficionados of off-road motoring all gather in the tavern, creating a fascinating microcosm of regional life.

Hofstetter's adventures extend far beyond his town's borders. Encouraged by his friend, the travel and food writer Jane Simon Ammeson, he embarks on a series of road trips exploring the back roads of Indiana. Their shared passion for historic and rural architecture leads them to the subterranean boat rides of Bluespring Caverns and tours of the Buffalo Trace Distillery; to quaint towns, and old cemeteries, and the superstitions of the people who inhabit Kentuckiana—the majority of whom believe in ghosts and think that God created the world 6,000 years ago, the Ice Age notwithstanding.

With musings on aging that liken life to a roll of paper towels spinning faster toward the end, this book is a rich and unflinching look at one man’s quest to find his own road in the American heartland.

Introduction

This section of Southern Indiana is breathtakingly beautiful with its dense copse of woods, hills and hollows (they really do call them hollers here), century-old homes and barns, pastures filled with grazing horses and meandering creeks. There s a sense of it being a small moment in time preserved in amber, a sense which one feels more intensely if you travel here as people did 150 years ago. I can understand why many people still travel to Story by horseback. I have always loved Story and the land around it, and I always will.