Fultz pens novel set in 1775 Martin Station

Published 8:41 am Friday, March 6, 2026

Cumberland Gap High School history teacher Christopher Fultz has penned a new book set in 1775 Martin Station. “Forest Shadows A Frontier Spy Novel” is a work of historical fiction following the adventures of a scout spy travelling the back country around Martin Station looking for signs of trouble that could hinder the American Revolution and the settling of Kentucky.

“It’s not based on anything at all. I use the actual location, many of the actual people that were there, but I use them as a framework for a fictional story that enhances the actual history,” Fultz said. “I also get technical with some of the how-to stuff. Like how did they do this? How did they accomplish that?

“I think it also pays tribute to the area in general, because it’s not just that we’re just telling a factual history. We’re talking about the landscape, the area, you know, not to romanticize it in that sense, but to give the reader a sense that the geography played such a vital role. Because everybody’s coming here to go through the Cumberland Gap. You just had to stop at Martin Station to purchase your part of Kentucky. So it’s a funnel, if you will. And that fleshes out that story, and it gives a little detail to it that way.”

Fultz is very familiar with the area’s history, not just through his work as a teacher but also from his work as a historical interpreter at Wilderness Road State Park for over 20 years.

“Being an employee up there, first a volunteer than an employee, and looking at the actual history of it, it always sort of sat with me that, hey, there’s a story here,” he said. “As a reader of historical fiction, I felt there was a great opportunity to flesh out the real history of the area. It sticks close to the true historical facts, but still presents them in an entertaining way. I think good historical fiction does that. Of course I also just tried to write a story that I would like to read.”

Fultz said Forest Shadows started as a story he was writing for himself to pass the time and not as a book he planned to have published. That changed when he left a part of it laying out in his classroom and his daughter read it and encouraged him to try and get it published.

“So she stayed on me to send it to a publisher and to my surprise it was very well received,” he said. “Looking back in my own history, there’s times when I thought it’d be really cool to be an author and to have that as a credential. So now, I guess I can say that, because she pushed me to do it.”.

Another goal of the book is to help promote the Wilderness Road State Park. The official launch event will be held at the visitor center there at 1 p.m. on March 21.

“The whole park will be open, and people will be able to walk back and see the fort and see where I’ve set a lot of this,” Fultz said. “That’s a unique aspect to it., If I wrote this about the Old West, or if I wrote this about 1920s New York, well, you can’t go see that. You can actually come see where we are. You can travel through the Cumberland Gap, hike some of the trails and get a sense for the geography of the situation. Starting in March all the way through the month of November we’re almost full time reenacting the scene. So any visitor or any reader who comes to the park is going to get more than a healthy dose of what inspired me to write the book.”

Earlier this week Fultz presented a copy of the “Forest Shadows” to CGHS Principal Beth Beeler that will be available in the school’s library.

“Hopefully this will inspire some of these kids who may pick it up and read it to do something similar,” he said. “If this is well received, there’ll be future books that just continue the story, because history here continues on and on, richly through the Cumberland Gap region and into Kentucky, into Tennessee. I think there’s still a lot of stories to tell.”

The book will be available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, especially as a digital download. Copies will be available at Wilderness Road on March 21 during the book’s launch event. They will also be for sale there through the Friends of the Wilderness Road State Park in the visitor center.

Fultz said people can also reach out to him for copies of the book locally