In Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver's mastery is on full display. Pulled straight from an modern Appalachian hollow, this book hit all the right notes. Demon could have been any number of young men I've known, and was just as real on the page as they were in life, and death. Kingsolver takes on the opioid crisis and rural disaffection with unflinching grace and a thorough understanding, in the process telling a damn good story. Though laid over the bones of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, this book does not at all feel derivative. It stands on its own, like Demon himself.
Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.
In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster…
Joy offers an unflinching look at modern Appalachia through a compelling narrative that twists through a small, mountain town's dark shadows. Joy knows this place and these people. This brave telling brings to light the seen, yet often unnamed undercurrent of racial animosity that persists among those we think we know. This can be a hard read for what it stirs up. But it is all-too-relevant, a work of fiction ripped straight from the headlines, and as well-told a story as you'll see anywhere.
Winner of the 2023 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction Winner of the 2023 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award Winner of the 2024 Sir Walter Raleigh Award
From award-winning writer David Joy comes a searing new novel about the cracks that form in a small North Carolina community and the evils that unfurl from its center.
Toya Gardner, a young Black artist from Atlanta, has returned to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains to trace her family history and complete her graduate thesis. But when she encounters a still-standing Confederate monument in the heart of town, she sets…
Ron Rash's latest offering is a tightly knit tale of love and loss in small town North Carolina. Set in the Blowing Rock of the 1950s, The Caretaker is populated with unforgettable characters and delivers a plot that O. Henry would die for. Rash proves yet again that he is a master of imagery. Charming and chilling both, this book explores the lengths one family will go to save its own and the lengths one man will go for love.
ONE OF THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Told against the backdrop of the Korean War as a small Appalachian town sends its sons to battle, The Caretaker by award-winning author Ron Rash ("One of the great American authors at work today" —The New York Times) is a breathtaking love story and a searing examination of the acts we seek to justify in the name of duty, family, honor, and love.
It’s 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among…
When a college professor inherits a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina, she must contend with the ghosts of her past. The discovery of a boy’s journal lures Caroline McAlister into the depths of a century-old murder and toward a past she thought she had long ago escaped. Her voice tangles with Carson Quinn’s in the laurel hell of a hollow they haunt a century apart, sharing hard lessons about love and loss.
