Burning Bright
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award
These twelve stories set in Appalachia are brought to life by characters who struggle through their lives, proud and tough, like the land itself.
A farmer wonders what is stealing his hens' eggs. A baited trap catches an unexpected thief.
A pawnshop owner trades on the stolen goods of local meth addicts, including his own nephew-who is doing more than just stealing from his parents.
A woman from a small town marries an outsider. Her love for him battles with her suspicions that he is the source of the fires ravaging the Smoky Mountains.
A young boy, the child of meth-addicted parents, sits in the remains of a crashed plane and lovingly tends to a pair of frozen corpses.
This brilliant collection of short stories by a New York Times bestselling author and a master of the form, will burn bright in your mind long after you have finished reading.
'Burning Bright finds a narrow sweet spot between Raymond Carver's minimalism and William Faulkner's Gothic.' Washington Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
SUPERB STORYTELLING
An eclectic and fascinating collection of short stories, I enjoyed everything about this book. Rash is a truly masterful storyteller. Superb!