Virginia in The Mansion (Location)

Two well-known Virginia historic sites are mentioned in the novel: Mount Vernon (171), and Appomattox (202). But Virginia becomes the site of an event when V.K. Ratliff insists that Gavin and he take the train to New York so he can trace his first American ancestor's history. He isn't sure where this earlier V.K. lived, but the train they're on travels through "Bristol then Roanoke and Lynchburg and turns north-east along side the blue mountains" - that is, the Blue Ridge Mountains (184).