It all started with a mild curiosity, just general questions about the people and places of his past.

Roy Kanode recently retired and moved back to his native home of Christiansburg after living away for 34 years.

Kanode, 63, looked around where he'd grown up and found he only half knew it.

"What was that old building? Who lived in that house? I wanted to remember," said Kanode, who worked as an engineer for the majority of his career.

One morning of research at the library led to another and another. He found stories about Christiansburg he never knew, stories that goaded him on to courthouse records and to the Virginia Tech special collections. He got so interested he called the descendants of the original families, interviewed them and looked through their old photo albums and newspaper clippings.

It was like finding buried treasure. He found photos never published before and descriptions of Christiansburg that had been written 100 years ago. It was exciting.

"I was getting new information," he said. "The stories just seemed to be calling to me. I felt like I was being led in a way. I was thinking, 'Wow, this story has got to be told. And this story has got to be told. This is good stuff.' "

There was so much information, he couldn't remember it all, so he came home at night and organized it in his computer.

After three years of this, he had a book.

"I didn't start out to write a book," he said, laughing. "But that's what happened."

It's not just any book either. It's the first complete history of Christiansburg, Kanode said. There is another book of Christiansburg history that was recently published, but it's mostly just photographs, he said.

Kanode realized that if the book was to ever be published, he'd have to do it himself. That was fine, he decided. It would be his lasting contribution to the community.

"I don't know how many will sell, but I feel good that the community will eventually see the value of it. It's amazing what has happened here from 1792 on. This is an old town; there is a lot of history here."

"Christiansburg, Virginia: Small Town America at its Finest" will be on sale for $47.50 in eight local stores Friday. It is 350 pages, with more than 400 photographs and 70 newspaper clippings. The book was designed by Meg Nugent, director of the visual design studio at Virginia Tech, and all the old photos were digitally re-mastered by Spencer Hall of Riner.

It's organized into 23 chapters. It begins with the early settlers on the Wilderness Trail and follows the notable people and buildings of the community until about 1960. The latter half of the book offers historical glimpses of each of the main streets downtown.

The book has many moments Kanode loves to recall, maybe none as much as the chapter on education and the Christiansburg Institute, the region's only black secondary and vocational school. For research he read the original 1860s meeting minutes of the Friends Freedman's Association, the Quaker philanthropists who funded the school.

The Institute "has such a rich history that's even yet to be plowed," he said.

And, he loves the story of how the constitution oak on town square was narrowly saved from bulldozers in 1960. The tree was given to the town in 1902. The state highway department had plans to mow over the tree when the women of Christiansburg went before the board of supervisors. Thanks to them, that tree still stands, Kanode said.

The book is filled with such jewels, "things people don't know, but ought to know," he said.

In the back, the book has a genealogy and an index of family names, so people can easily locate their kin.

Kanode said he has no plans for more books in the near future. He does hope to see this book distributed in the Montgomery County Schools.

"I'm hoping to stimulate more interest in history," he said. "I felt like I needed to capture all that history before it up and disappears on us."

Kanode will sign copies of his book on the following dates: 3 to 6 p.m. Wednesday at Sherman's; 4 to 6 p.m. Dec. 2 at the Coffee Depot; noon to 3 p.m. Dec. 3 at the Coffee Depot; 5 to 8 p.m. Dec. 9 at the Coffee Depot; and noon to 3 p.m. Dec. 10 at the Easy Chair.