Virtually every landscape is a palimpsest, created by the imprint, however ephemeral, that people have left everywhere they have been. As one peels back layers of history, the true nature of a place can be better understood. A History of Sautee Nacoochee does precisely this for a small Appalachian community with a remarkably long history.

Sautee Nacoochee is a rural community located in White County in northeastern Georgia. It is centered around two large valleys, Sautee, drained by Sautee Creek, and Nacoochee, drained by the Chattahoochee River. In the broadest terms, this book synthesizes an enormous amount of information from many disparate sources into a narrative that identifies historical contexts, that documents and incorporates site-specific information, and that strives to illuminate the lives of the people who over many centuries of human occupation and in many different ways contributed to making Sautee Nacoochee what it is today. It is not a typical "pioneer" history. Indeed, Tommy Hart Jones illuminates the lives of all the people who have occupied the valleys over many thousands of years and connects the deep past to the present.