The Author

Bill Jacobs has maintained a home near Cashiers since 1985, and it was his primary residence for 10 of those years.  He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Duke Law School.  After retiring from 38 years as a lawyer (mostly in Atlanta), he pursued his curiosity about the extraordinary landscape of the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau.  Failing to find concise answers, his inquiries led him through a wide array of on-line and in-person courses, and of academic, professional and popular books and papers.  While these were informative and stimulating, the most rewarding (and fun) part of the journey has been feet-on-the-ground field work, at times in challenging terrain  It was the field work that enabled him to identify previously unmapped relationships among the Plateau’s various rocks, and to use those relationships to better explain how geology has determined the nature and location of many of the Plateau’s Special Places.

Bill spends the summers in Cashiers and the balance of the year at his home in Asheville’s Montford neighborhood, in each case with Susan Posey, his wife of 45 years (and still counting), and their two dogs and a cat.  Whence These Special Places? is dedicated to Susan.  She is retired as a psychotherapist,  remains very active as a pet lover, and in recent years has become an author of historical fiction — her first book, A Home on Wilder Shores, will be released in late 2019.  Their daughter, Laurie, lives in Pittsburgh, where her activities revolve around being a pediatric hospitalist and an unrepentant dog lover.  When Bill is not writing, studying or doing geology, he is likely to be found roaming about on a bicycle, up and down the mountainous landscape of his Western North Carolina home.