Burning Bright by Ron Rash; and Other Appalachian Authors

 

The Bristol Public Library together with Washington County Virginia Public Library System and the Birthplace of Country Music Museum were awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for The Big Read.  The theme is “Where We Live,” and the book selected is Burning Bright by Ron Rash.  Free copies of the book will be available at all three locations while supplies last.  A wide array of programs will be available, including book discussions, author talks, creative writing workshops, and more. Click here for more information. 

Ron Rash is known for both his novels and his short stories which portray life in the Appalachian region.  A professor and a poet, Rash’s stories can be gritty and beautiful at the same time.  His stories are set in various time periods but all are memorable.  Burning Bright is a superb collection of his stories; novels include The Cove and Serena.

Other Appalachian authors include:

Lee Smith was born in Grundy, VA and began writing stories in elementary school. She is the author of many acclaimed novels and short story collections, including Family Linen, Black Mountain Breakdown, Fair and Tender Ladies, and Devil’s Dream.

Silas House was working as a rural mail carrier just before he sold his first novel, Clay’s Quilt. Clay Sizemore is a young miner who is falling in love with Alma, a talented fiddler trying to escape an abusive husband. Other titles include A Parchment of Leaves and The Coal Tattoo.          

Sharyn McCrumb is best known for her Ballad novels set in Appalachia. Many draw on regional history and legends as part of the story.  Titles include She Walks These Hills, Unquiet Grave, The Ballad of Tom Dooley, and The Devil Amongst the Lawyers.

Julia Keller was a journalist before turning her attention to fiction.  Her Bell Elkins series follows a prosecutor in the rural West Virginia town of Acker’s Gap.  In A Killing in the Hills, the first book in the series, three men are gunned down in a local dinner in broad daylight. To make matters worse, one of the witnesses was Bell’s own teenage daughter. Keller shows both the beauty and the troubles of the area, and the harm addiction brings.

Wiley Cash writes about his native North Carolina in his gothic, character-driven novels.  Like Rash, Cash doesn’t hesitate to show the darker side of human nature but love can be a powerful countermeasure.  His first novel was A Land More Kind Than Home.          

Ann Pancake grew up in West Virginia and her writing tends to be set in the Appalachian region.  Her work includes novel, short stories, and essays.  Strange as This Weather Has Been is a contemporary novel about a family dealing with the rise and fall of the mining industry and mountaintop removal. 

Amy Greene writes novels set in East Tennessee.  Long Man is set in 1936, when the TVA wants to dam the river and flood the surrounding communities. Annie Clyde Dotson’s family has lived on this land for generations, and she is determined to try to hold on to it for her daughter.

Denise Giardina writes a variety of historical fiction. Born in Bluefield, WV, she is the author of two acclaimed Appalachian novels.  Storming Heaven begins in the 1890s, when miners began to unionize; Unquiet Earth picks up in the 1930s. Giardina likes to tell her stories through her characters, presenting different viewpoints.

Brian Panowich writes gritty thrillers that have been dubbed “Country Noir” for vivid landscapes and violent crime.   In Bull Mountain, a sheriff whose family has lived on the land for generations has to contend with balancing duty and family ties. 

Other authors to consider:  Adriana Trigiani, Jesse Stuart, Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Morgan, Charles Frazier

Nevermore: Wiley Cash, Astrophysics, Elly Griffiths, Bloody Roads South, Murder on the Orient Express

Reported by Kristin

Nevermore began with some Appalachian flavor with The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash.  Ella May Wiggins is living in North Carolina in 1929, scraping by on the night shift at the local cotton mill.  The dirt and the danger are hard for the young woman to handle, but she is desperate to feed her family.  Union organizers start pushing for reform, but the leadership denounces their efforts as Communist.  Ella May decides to join the union movement at great personal risk.  The story is told by Ella May’s daughter Lilly, an old woman at the time of the telling.  The mingling of points of view is one of Cash’s trademarks, and he tells the story well.

A tiny book put in an appearance, What Women Say About Men: Witty Observations on the Male of the Species.  While group members chuckled, our reader said that it was a very enjoyable book, and surprisingly, she didn’t finish as quickly as she would have thought because she had to reflect upon the points made.

Another small but dense book was discussed next:  Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Our reader said that this is for people who really want the big picture, and although it took him three weeks to read and digest it, it was well worth it.  Covering universal concepts (pun intended,) Tyson proposes many new facts for the lay person to get his or her mind around, so that many people may end up with even more new questions and ideas to explore further.

The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths brings back anthropologist Ruth Galloway to examine another set of bones, these found in the labyrinth of tunnels under Norwich.  The bones were translucent, almost as if they had been boiled.  Ruth has been involved with a local policeman during the earlier books in the series, and the affair continues.  Our reader very much enjoyed the characters and gives Ruth positive reviews, reading everything in the series for the past several years.

Our next reader was intrigued by Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May-June 1864 by Noah Andre Trudeau.  Vividly detailed personal accounts from the last strategic push of the Civil War show what carnage the soldiers endured and their thoughts as poured out to loved ones in letters.  Bringing alive the people involved, these little vignettes tell an engaging story to lovers and students of history alike.

Lastly, the new movie in theatres inspired another reader to pick up Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.  Called “the most widely read mystery of all time,” the story is comprised of a classic locked room murder, when Edward Ratchett is stabbed to death inside his train berth with the door locked from the inside (but no murderer in sight.)  Our reader said that she still had about twenty pages to go, and was looking forward to the dénouement.

Nevermore: Thanksgiving, Last Ballad, Indigo Girl, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Wild Things, Murder on the Orient Express

Reported by Jeanne

Nevermore opened with a review of The Thanksgiving Book, a delightful browsing book which provides a history of the holiday, recipes, short stories, poems, and even suggestions for games.  Our reader enjoyed it thoroughly, noting that there were many feasts of harvest and thanksgiving before the Pilgrims ever held their feast; some, though not all, were in North America, too.  Had it not been for some friendly Native Americans, the colony would not have survived.  The seeds they brought with them from Europe did not germinate well in the sandy soil, and had the Pilgrims not been gifted with seeds from native plants they likely would not have had a harvest to celebrate.  However, the modern version grew out of the work of Sarah Josephina Hale, who lobbied several presidents for a national holiday.  Abraham Lincoln was the first to take her up on it, proclaiming a day of thanksgiving on the final Thursday in November, 1863.  The book is suggested for those interested in the true story behind the holiday.

The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash is listed as fiction, but it’s based on the life of a real person,  Ella Mae Wiggin.  The story is set in North Carolina in 1929 where the young mother works at one of the many mills in the region.  It’s hard, dangerous work, for little pay, but since her husband has run off and she has children to support, Ella Mae has very little choice.  Then she hears about some people who are trying to organize a union, and begins to have hope for a better life.  Our reviewer thought this was a superb book, beautifully written.  She found it difficult to put down, and recommended it highly.

Another fictionalized version of an historical figure was presented in Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd.  In 1739, sixteen year old Eliza Lucas’ father sailed for the Caribbean, leaving her in charge of the family’s South Carolina plantations.  Eliza’s interest in botany leads her to experiment with different crops, but family troubles, war, and Eliza’s unconventional relationship with the slaves threatens all she holds dear. Our reader thought it was a fascinating book, but thought it was sad that no portrait of the real Eliza is known to exist.

We Were Eight Years in Power is the new collection of essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates, winner of the National Book Award for Between the World and Me.  Coates covers American race relations, politics, and history in his writing, including the case for reparations and the backlash again African Americans during Reconstruction.  As before, the writing is thoughtful and insightful.

The next book was Wild Things:  The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult by Bruce Handy, which turned out to be a bit of a let-down.  While Handy covered a number of classic children’s books, most of his choices were more modern pieces.  Our reviewer said she was especially disappointed that there was no mention of one of her childhood idols, Pippi Longstocking. She found some of the other selections a bit “off the wall.”

More enjoyable was Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, which had been chosen because of the new movie.  The detective Hercule Poirot is traveling on the Orient Express when one of the passengers is murdered.  There is a whole compartment of suspects and Poirot is hard pressed to sort them all out.  Our reader enjoyed it and was surprised at the ending.  She said she had figured some things out, but not all. 

Finally, a reader recommended The Chick and the Dead by Carla Valentine, the autobiography of a British pathologist. Valentine takes the reader through the process of an autopsy while also musing on how different cultures regard death.  She’s also candid about her personal life.  It was an entertaining mix.

Emerging Appalachian Authors at ETSU

The East Tennessee State University student literary organization, Literati, is sponsoring a wonderful day of new Appalachian fiction next Wednesday, September 5.  The event is called "3 Emerging Novelists," and will feature New York Times bestselling author Wiley Cash (A Land More Kind than Home, William Morrow); Bulls Gap, TN native Amy Greene (Bloodroot, Vintage); and Asheville writer Charles Dodd White (Lambs of Men, Casperian).

The novelists will offer an afternoon round table discussion at 1:40 PM in the East Tennessee Room in Culp Center, and an evening fiction reading at 7:00 PM in Ball Hall Auditorium.