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252 pages, Hardcover
First published September 26, 2023
The dead could do nothing worse to him than the living had already done.--------------------------------------
He couldn’t shake the inkling that something was about to happen, even as the morning passed undisturbed.Oh, what a tangled web we weave…
The spring his family moved here from Foscoe, Blackburn’s father sent him to catch trout for supper. He’d been fishing on the edge of the Hampton property when Jacob appeared. Blackburn thought he’d come to run him off. Instead, Jacob guided him to the pasture’s best pools tent, and soon Blackburn’s stringer was heavy with fish. He showed Blackburn a pretend fort made of fallen branches, said that together they could build it up even bigger. It was only when Blackburn was about to head home that Jacob acknowledged his face. Does it hurt? Blackburn said no. I’m glad it doesn’t, Jacob had said.The closeness between Jacob and Blackburn is palpable, but as Blackburn does all he can for his best friend’s wife, their bond grows as well.
The storm had shaken branches off the white oak. Blackburn picked them up, including one on Shay Leary’s grave. The weathervane shifted. Clearer skies were coming.But are they, really? I could not help but think of another expression of hopeful anticipation, Something’s Coming from West Side Story. And how did that story of young-love-thwarted play out? Just sayin’. The imagery is not solely applied for the literary weight-bearing, but, directed through the consciousness of his Appalachian characters, the images serve to speak against any uninformed take about the intelligence of the people living in this part of the world. It requires sophistication to think in images. Giving them these thoughts makes it impossible to think of them as hillbillies, or unintelligent, regardless of how many years of school they may have completed. Some are there not so much to broaden the characters, as to toss readers an omen for our consideration. As soon as you see a mention of Barbara Hightower, for example, your antennae will be on alert for some sort of nefarious trade, whether real or theoretical. Mentions of trout might be there to highlight some form of purity.
When Rash was in high school, his father was hospitalized for depression, an illness that tormented him for years. Sue Rash was left alone to look after three children in a small Southern town, one that often felt to her eldest son like its own dwarf planet. But when the family needed support from their neighbors, they got it. “The whole town helped us,” Ron says. “It was a struggle that was never spoken of, but they knew. And people came through for us.” - from the Garden & Gun interviewFriendship is often in Rash’s spotlight. How far would you go for a friend? Where is the line you would not cross? Family dynamics are given a close look, in Jacob’s family and beyond, particularly how parents treat children and why. Character will be sorely tested. Not all will do themselves proud.
Somethin's comin', I don't know what it isYes. Yes, it is.
But it is gonna be great
Ron Rash’s family has lived in the southern Appalachian Mountains since the mid-1700’s, and it is this region that is the primary focus of his writing. Rash grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, and graduated from Gardner-Webb College and Clemson University. He holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University. Rash is the author of 9 books: The Night The New Jesus Fell to Earth (short stories), Casualties (short stories), Eureka Mill (poetry), and Among the Believers (poetry), Raising the Dead (poetry), One Foot in Eden (novel), Saints at the River (novel), The World Made Straight (2006), and Serena (2008). His poetry and fiction have appeared in over one hundred journals, magazines, and anthologies, including The Longman Anthology of Southern Literature, Western Wind, Sewanee Review, Yale Review, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Southern Review, Shenandoah and Poetry.Interviews
“One of the great American authors at work today.” — The New York Times
“Ron Rash is a writer of both the darkly beautiful and the sadly true. . . . One of our very finest novelists.” — Richard Russo