Ron Rash

Living deep within a cove in the Appalachians of North Carolina during World War I, Laurel Shelton finally finds the happiness she deserves in Walter, a mysterious stranger who is mute, but their love cannot protect them from a devastating secret.

Enduring the mistakes and tragedies that have shaped their lives in contemporary Appalachia, a sheriff on the brink of retirement and a haunted park ranger confront violent forces when an elderly local is accused of poisoning a trout stream.

No one captures the complexities of Appalachia as evocatively as Rash. This collection of short stories demonstrate his ability to evoke the heart and soul of this land and its people.

From Ron Rash, PEN / Faulkner Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Serena, comes a new collection of unforgettable stories set in Appalachia that focuses on the lives of those haunted by violence and tenderness, hope and fear-spanning the Civil War to the present day. The darkness of Ron Rash's work contrasts with its unexpected sensitivity and stark beauty in a manner that could only be accomplished by this master of the short...

The Shark's Tooth is a poetic tale of imagination and conservation in which a young girl visiting her grandparents' beach house finds friendship with the ocean's creatures. Sharks' teeth are given to her by her new aquatic friends as gifts, symbolic of her connections to nature and the sea. As the little girl grows up and moves away to the city, she loses her kinship to the natural world. When she returns to the beach house as an adult, she is convinced...

Rooted in places like Watauga County, Goshen Creek, and Dismal Mountain, the poems in Ron Rash's fourth collection, Waking, electrify dry counties and tobacco fields until they sparkle with the rituals and traditions of Southerners in the stir of their lives. In his first book of poetry in nearly a decade, Rash leads his readers on a Southern odyssey, full of a terse wit and a sense of the narrative so authentic it will dazzle you. As we wake inside...

Ten humorous, interconnected short stories following three narrators as they learn lessons about life in the North Carolina foothills. The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth was originally released in 1994 and was the first published book from acclaimed writer Ron Rash. This twentieth anniversary edition takes us back to where it all began with ten linked short stories, framed like a novel, introducing us to a trio of memorable narrators-Tracy,...

"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 the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. It suits his withdrawn personality, and the inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted...

Travis Shelton is seventeen the summer he wanders into the woods near his home, discovers a grove of marijuana large enough to make him some serious money, and steps into the jaws of a bear trap. After hours on the forest floor, he's released from the trap by the shrewd, vicious farmer who set it--but his confrontation with the subtle evils that underlie the life of his small Appalachian community has begun.