This novel begins in West Virginia in 1967 with a logging accident and Lux Cranfield’s courtship and marriage to Dessie Price. Dessie’s little sister, Billie ends up with Lux’s friend, Ray Munn and the story follows them and their children for the next twenty years. “Proudfoot is a talented wordsmith, and her lyrical writing is the highlight of her debut novel. She details the landscape of the mountains and dirt roads with tenderness and detail, and creates complex, rich characters.”—Booklist. “Goshen Road is a rich, multigenerational tale exploring women’s expanding roles in a rural environment. The women are afforded few opportunities here, and they often settle for much less than they deserve, but they are resourceful and ultimately as resilient and reliable as the untamable land.”—Marie Manilla. “Bonnie Proudfoot writes the kind of book that means something, a book that carries weight in a way that only serious fiction can. Her words delight and move, but they do much more than that. She interrogates the truth of the people and place of Appalachia. Her debut should be savored by those who admire timeless fiction.”—Charles Dodd White. The author, Bonnie Proudfoot, is a glass artist and poet who moved to Southeast Ohio in 1979, and has taught at Hocking College. This is her first book.
Athens, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2020. 220 pages. Trade paperback.