Traveling Alone

by Katy Goforth

Cowboy Jamboree Press
good grit lit.As a child, Holt Watson was drawn to the dying, holding their hand as they left this world. For his help, Holt was paid with the deceased’s talent, like Uncle Hump’s guitar picking and Mr. Dooly’s songwriting.

Now as an adult and successful Americana musician, Holt keeps his distance from his hometown, it’s dying and anyone for that matter until the woman who raised him lays on her own deathbed. Back home in Wilkesboro, N.C., he feels the familiar tug but this time it pulls him back in time to lost loved ones, and he’s forced to face the truth he’s long been running from.

“In this remarkable debut, Katy Goforth vividly portrays Appalachian music, culture, and folklore. Nevertheless, in a book centered on the supernatural, she also offers deep insights into the mysteries of the human heart. Traveling Alone is a novel I greatly admire, and I hope it gets the wide and appreciative readership it deserves.”

–Ron Rash, author of Serena and The Cove

“Katy Goforth's pen is a uniquely precise bolt of cloud-to-ground lightning, and Traveling Alone's Holt Watson is my new blood brother.”

–Sheldon Lee Compton, author of Oblivion Angels


“Rich with the resonance of friendship and of family not related by blood, of music and of mountain mystery and folklore, Katy Goforth’s Traveling Alone engages readers with the story of Holt Watson and his relationships with adopted mother Birdie and longtime friend Carrie, both needing Holt home from the Nashville music scene into which he had disappeared to escape the mysterious power he names the Pull. Unable to resist Birdie’s need in her final illness, Holt returns to the old farmhouse where he grew up, a place where past and present and life and death converge. There, he must decide if he will once again abandon home and its demands or stay and learn to use—and learn to live with—the blessed curse of the Pull’s gift.”

–Michael Amos Cody, author of Streets of Nashville

219 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 14, 2025

About the author

Katy Goforth is the author of Anchored (Belle Point Press, February 2025) and Traveling Alone (Cowboy Jamboree Press, October 2025). Her writing has appeared in Brevity, Reckon Review, Cowboy Jamboree, Salvation South, and other journals. She is Pushcart, Best American Short Stories, and Best Small Fictions nominated. She was born and raised in South Carolina and lives with her spouse and two pups, Finn and Betty Anne. Learn more at katygoforth.com and follow her @katygoforthwrites.

Reviews

[Angela Nixon]

This is a beautifully written story about connections -- the connections people have with one another (blood or otherwise), the connections we have with our homes, the connections we have with the past and even the future -- and no matter how hard we try, some of those connections are too strong to ever be broken. I love the characters in this book, as well as the setting -- the mountains of Western North Carolina -- which is also a character that plays as important of a role as any person in this story. I keep turning this story over in my mind. It's a relatively short book, but i think it's one that is going to stick with me for a while.

[Michael Cody]

Rich with the resonance of friendship and of family not related by blood, of music and of mountain mystery and folklore, Katy Goforth’s Traveling Alone engages readers with the story of Holt Watson and his relationships with adopted mother Birdie and longtime friend Carrie, both needing Holt home from the Nashville music scene into which he had disappeared to escape the mysterious power he names the Pull. Unable to resist Birdie’s need in her final illness, Holt returns to the old farmhouse where he grew up, a place where past and present and life and death converge. There, he must decide if he will once again abandon home and its demands or stay and learn to use—and learn to live with—the blessed curse of the Pull’s gift.