Cindy K Sproles Books in Order

If you want her Appalachian fiction: Mercy's Rain → Liar's Winter → Coal Black Lies
If you prefer standalone mountain stories: What Momma Left Behind → This Is Where It Ends
If you'd like nonfiction and reflection first: New Sheets

Cindy K. Sproles was born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains, and that mountain upbringing still sits at the center of her work. She grew up in East Tennessee around the speech, stories, faith, and stubborn grit that later became the backbone of her fiction. She often describes herself as a mountain girl, and the phrase fits. Today she still lives in the mountains of East Tennessee with her husband and family.

Writing came to her through ministry as much as ambition.

A key turn came in 2005, when she attended a writers conference and heard a speaker talk about writing for the person right next to you. She started writing a devotion every day, and that steady practice led to a much larger calling. Not long after, she and Eddie Jones cofounded Christian Devotions Ministries, work that put her in front of readers, writers, and aspiring authors across the country.

She took the long road into her career, and she doesn't hide that.

Sproles has said her family carried her through years of writing, travel, and study, and she earned her college degree at age forty-nine. She holds a BA in business and journalism, has worked as an editor in several roles, and now spends a good part of her time teaching craft, mentoring new writers, and speaking at conferences and women's events. She also directs the Asheville Christian Writers Conference and helps coach writers through WRAMS, her mentoring service.

Readers who come to her fiction usually start with Mercy's Rain or Liar's Winter, two Appalachian historical novels that put wounded characters in hard country and ask what grace looks like when life has been cruel. What Momma Left Behind turns to a young woman suddenly responsible for orphaned children. Coal Black Lies brings readers into coal country, while This Is Where It Ends follows an elderly mountain woman guarding a secret for decades. The books are known for strong mountain settings, plain talk, and characters who have to fight for every scrap of hope.

Her stories are steeped in place, but the pull is not just the setting. She writes about people cornered by abuse, prejudice, poverty, grief, and family trouble, then watches what happens when mercy, truth, or forgiveness finally breaks through. Even her nonfiction, including New Sheets, carries that same plainspoken interest in hard seasons, fresh starts, and the slow work of being remade.

That mix of mountain storytelling and faith has brought recognition along the way. Mercy's Rain was honored by the Illumination Awards, and Liar's Winter later took Gold there, but the more useful way to describe her career is simpler: she kept writing, kept teaching, and kept returning to the people and places she knew best.

She also sounds like the person her readers meet on the page. Warm, direct, a little funny, and deeply rooted in home. She is the mother of four adult sons, and her life now still seems to circle the same things that shaped her work from the start, faith, family, the mountains, and the belief that stories can offer shelter when life gets rough.