Of all the thousands of books I've handled in my almost forty years as a seller of Appalachian books, this is my favorite book cover. And it is one of my favorite book innerds, as well. When I took the job as editor of Appalachian Heritage in 2002, I decided to feature one particular author in each issue. I thought about who would be likely to become more well-established of all the authors I knew. I am proud that I selected Ron Rash as my first featured author because his career has arguably blossomed as much since then as any author did throughout my tenure there which ended in 2013. At the time, his first novel had just been published. Ron Rash is the only Appalachian short story writer whose work has been awarded the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award out of Great Britain for the best collection of short stories published in the English language world-wide. That went to Ron Rash's fifth collection, Nothing Gold Can Stay. This book is Rash's third collection that includes some stories reprinted from his first two collections.
New York: Picador Press, 2007. 230 pages. Trade paperback.