Sidle Creek
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A NPR Book of the Year
A Library Journal Best Books of 2023
A Library Journal 2023 Best Book Covers of the Year
"Sidle Creek is one of the best story collections I’ve read in a long time." - Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of Serena
Set in the bruised, mined, and timbered hills of Appalachia in western Pennsylvania, Sidle Creek is a tender, truthful exploration of a small town and the people who live there, told by a brilliant new voice in fiction.
In Sidle Creek, McIlwain skillfully interrogates the myths and stereotypes of the mining, mill, and farming towns where she grew up. With stories that take place in diners and dive bars, town halls and bait shops, McIlwain’s writing explores themes of class, work, health, and trauma, and the unexpected human connections of small, close-knit communities. All the while, the wild beauty of the natural world weaves its way in, a source of the town’s livelihood – and vulnerable to natural resource exploitation.
With an alchemic blend of taut prose, gorgeous imagery, and deep sensitivity for all of the living beings within its pages, Sidle Creek will sit snugly on bookshelves between Annie Proulx, Joy Williams, and Louise Erdrich.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McIlwain's impressive debut collection spotlights the hard-edged people who call rural western Pennsylvania home. In the title story, a father and daughter bond while fishing in a creek with reputedly healing waters. The girl's mother has left them, and her father claims the water will help her endometriosis symptoms. In the luminous, Ovid-like "The Fractal Geometry of Grief," a widower falls in love with a doe that seems to embody his late wife, prompting him to protect her from local hunters. The harrowing "Loosed" introduces Luke, a struggling egg farmer who goes from staging cockfights to dogfights, and finally and most lucratively pits his own four sons against each other in bloody hand-to-hand combat. "The Less Said" features a group of city-slicker deer hunters who frequent a local bar. After a tech-savvy volunteer at the local library finds internet videos of the group torturing locals, mainly young women, at their hunting camp, a group of seasoned and principled hunters evens the score. The author demonstrates the blessings and horrors of a close-knit community with great skill and understanding. Throughout, McIlwain's reverent regard for the natural world makes her a worthy successor of Annie Dillard.
