Burning Bright: Stories - Hardcover

Rash, Ron

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061804118 ISBN 13: 9780061804113

Publisher: Ecco, 2010

Synopsis

“A gorgeous, brutal writer.”
—Richard Price, New York Times bestselling author of Lush Life and Clockers

 

In Burning Bright, Pen/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Serena, Ron Rash, captures the eerie beauty and stark violence of Appalachia through the lives of  unforgettable characters. With this masterful collection of stories that span the Civil War to the present day, Rash, a supremely talented writer who “recalls both John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy” (The New Yorker), solidifies his reputation as a major contemporary American literary artist.

About this title

About the Author

Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall, in addition to four prizewinning novels, including The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.

From the Back Cover

New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Ron Rash is "a storyteller of the highest rank" (Jeffrey Lent) and has won comparisons to John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, and Gabriel García Márquez. It is rare that an author can capture the complexities of a place as though it were a person, and rarer still that one can reveal a land as dichotomous and fractious as Appalachia—a muse; a siren; a rugged, brutal landscape of exceptional beauty, promise, and suffering—with the honesty and precision of a photograph. "If you haven't heard of the Southern writer Ron Rash, it is time you should" (The Plain Dealer).

In Burning Bright, the stories span the years from the Civil War to the present day, and Rash's historical and modern settings are sewn together in a hauntingly beautiful patchwork of suspense and myth, populated by raw and unforgettable characters mined from the landscape of Appalachia. In "Back of Beyond," a pawnshop owner who profits from the stolen goods of local meth addicts—including his own nephew—comes to the aid of his brother and sister-in-law when they are threatened by their son. The pregnant wife of a Lincoln sympathizer alone in Confederate territory takes revenge to protect her family in "Lincolnites." And in the title story, a woman from a small town marries an outsider; when an unknown arsonist starts fires in the Smoky Mountains, her husband becomes the key suspect.

In these stories, Rash brings to light a previously unexplored territory, hidden in plain sight—first a landscape, and then the dark yet lyrical heart and the alluringly melancholy soul of his characters and their home.

Reviews

The latest from Rash (Serena), a collection, begins with Hard Times, in which a struggling farmer in the midst of the Great Depression tries to discover who's stealing eggs from his henhouse without offending the volatile pride of his impoverished neighbors. The present-day stories are also situated in poverty-plagued small towns whose young citizens are being lost to meth addictions: in Back of Beyond, a pawnshop owner has to intervene when he learns his nephew Danny has kicked his parents out of their house and sold off their furniture to support his habit; in The Ascent, a young boy lovingly tends to a couple of corpses—victims of a small plane crash. Rash's stories are calm, dark and overtly symbolic, sometimes so literal they verge on redundant: in Dead Confederates, when a man falls into the Confederate tomb he's looting, the graveyard caretaker notes: I'd say he's helped dig his own grave. With a mastery of dialogue, Rash has written a tribute and a pre-emptive eulogy for the hardworking, straight-talking farmers of the Appalachian Mountains. (Mar.)
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Born and raised in the Carolinas, Rash—also a poet and novelist (Serena, 2008)—has become known as a writer of Appalachia. Although these 12 stories are set in that region, in times ranging from the Civil War to today, they display a universality that goes beyond time or place. Rash’s characters, often struggling to make their way in the world, act as they believe they must to save what is dear to them—family members, a marriage, a heritage, a nation, and even a neighbor’s child. In the title story, a woman widowed and remarried to a younger handyman drifter lies to protect her husband, despite what she knows in her heart. In this, as in other stories, Rash leaves the reader with thoughts of the near-inevitable aftermath and its consequences. There is a purity and precision in Rash’s prose, reminiscent of his poetry, that makes these stories as deceptively easy to read as they are hard to forget. This is memorable, unflinching short fiction by a master of the form. --Michele Leber

Edition details

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061804118
• ISBN 13: 9780061804113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224