Nashville: Hills of Harmony Book

For award-winning vocalist and songwriter Amy Grant, her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, is actually two places in one: "There's the Nashville of old money, higher education, government, banking, insurance, commerce, and high-tech enterprise. And there's the strong presence of the music industry, with its dominant influence on world pop culture. Many Nashvillians move exquisitely through both of these worlds."

In her introductory essay to Nashville: Hills of Harmony, Grant sings the praises of the area she has called home since childhood. Noting the coexistence of the city's status as both the state's capital and the country music capital of the world, Grant pays tribute to what she calls the marriage of "the cultured and the country." In the process, Nashville emerges as a place that welcomes with open arms the myriad personalities it takes to make a city.

The two sides of the municipal coin that is Nashville seem to be a match made in heaven, and-just like the surrounding geography-one imbued with peaks, valleys, and a multitude of views. "And now," Grant writes, we're watching the offspring from this marriage… as they grow and flourish, all made by the marriage of the two Nashvilles many years ago."