This image is the cover for the book Wicked Asheville, Wicked

Wicked Asheville, Wicked

Discover the wicked and sordid history of Asheville, North Carolina in this volume by author and Asheville native Marla Hardee Milling.


Asheville is a wonderfully strange city, but it has a few shadows in its past. Teenager Helen Clevenger was brutally murdered at the luxurious Battery Park Hotel in 1936. William Dudley Pelley called himself "America's Hitler" and founded his Silver Legion in Asheville. He stirred up enough anti war propaganda to go to prison. A desperado named Will Harris came into town on a cold night in November 1906 and left a trail of dead bodies and panic among Asheville citizens. Mayor Gallatin Roberts killed himself in the wake of collapsing banks. Asheville native Marla Hardee Milling delves into wicked stories of murder, sedition, corruption, arson and disease.

Marla Hardee Milling, Joshua P. Warren

Marla Hardee Milling is a native of Asheville with ancestors on both sides of her family going back many generations in Western North Carolina. She's a full-time writer with more than eight hundred published articles and essays. She's a contributing editor for Blue Ridge Country and a freelance staff writer for Match.com and writes regularly for Capital at Play, Smoky Mountain Living and the Asheville Citizen-Times. Her byline has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Our State, WNC, AAA GO Magazine, Luxury Living, NICHE, American Style, Redbook, Parenting, Health, Kid's Heath, Women's Health & Fitness, Denver, Charleston, New Orleans Gourmet, Chocolate for a Woman's Soul II and many others. She's written two previous nonfiction books: Only in Asheville: An Eclectic History and Legends, Secrets and Mysteries of Asheville.

The History Press