For a brief and cherished time there was a woman, and then a child, too, who had been a kind of salvation to him. Then they were gone, leaving Ellis to carry on with the burden of what he had done to them, of the ruin he brought down upon them all.In The Sweet Everlasting, Ellis is seventy-four. Moving back and forth over his life, he recalls his Depression-era boyhood, the black family who worked the neighboring farm, his time in prison, and the subsequent years adrift, working at jobs no one else would take and longing for another chance to rejoin what is left of his family. Ever in the background are the memories of his wife, Susan, and their boy, W.D.--how Ellis drew on her strength and his innocence to resist everything that threatened to harden him: the shame that others would have him feel, the poverty he had known, and the distorted honor and pride he had seen in others and that he knew was inside him, too.Like the hero of William Kennedy's masterpiece, Ironweed, Ellis Burt is a man of uncommon personal dignity and strength, always moving toward, but never expecting, redemption.

    The author of the classics River of Earth (1940) and The Wolfpen Poems (1986), Still is known for his careful prose construction and for the poetry of his meticulous, rhythmic style. Upon his death, however, one manuscript remained unpublished. Still's friends, family, and fellow writer Silas House will now deliver this story to readers, having assembled and refined the manuscript to prepare it for publication. Chinaberry, named for the ranch that serves as the centerpiece of the story, is Still's last and perhaps greatest contribution to American literature.Chinaberry follows the adventures of a young boy as he travels to Texas from Alabama in search of work on a cotton farm. Upon arriving, he discovers the ranch of Anson and Lurie Winters, a young couple whose lives are defined by hard work, family, and a tragedy that haunts their past. Still's entrancing narrative centers on the boy's experience at the ranch under Anson's watchful eye and Lurie's doting care, highlighting the importance of home, whether it is defined by people or a place.In this celebration of the art of storytelling, Still captures a time and place that are gone forever and introduces the reader to an unforgettable cast of characters, illustrating the impact that one person can have on another. A combination of memoir and imagination, truth and fiction, Chinaberry is a work of art that leaves the reader in awe of Still's mastery of language and thankful for the lifetime of wisdom that manifests itself in his work.

    Tara had returned from Europe to study medicine and start a practice, only to collapse with a severe nervous breakdown.

     The Secret Sense of Wildflower: Named a Best Book of 2012 by Kirkus Reviews. Over 250 reviews! Small southern towns have few secrets. But when a grieving daughter confronts the local bad boy, she exposes a dark history. Appalachia, 1941. Thirteen-year-old Louisa May "Wildflower" McAllister's heart still aches for her father. A year after her dad's tragic sawmill accident, she relies on her strength of spirit and her heightened intuition to deal with a critical mother and cope with the aftermath.But when she's targeted by the town's teenage bully, she may need more than her "secret sense" to survive.Despite these hardships, Wildflower has a resilience that is forged with humor, a love of the land, and an endless supply of questions to God. But after an affront to her father's memory, she lets her anger get the better of her and unwittingly triggers a series of traumatic events that will change her life forever.Will Wildflower fall to another tragedy or will her faith in her family and herself be enough to carry her through?With prose as lush and colorful as the American south, The Secret Sense of Wildflower is powerful and poignant, brimming with energy and angst, humor and hope. Lily’s Song: A mother’s secrets, a daughter’s dream, and a family’s loyalty are masterfully interwoven in this much anticipated sequel to Amazon #1 bestseller The Secret Sense of Wildflower. “Wildflower” McAllister’s daughter, Lily, now 14, struggles with her mother’s reluctance to tell her who her father is. When a stranger appears on the family doorstep, drunk and evoking ghosts from the past, it threatens to break the close-knit McAllister family apart.Meanwhile, Wildflower has a deep secret of her own. When Lily discovers it by accident, it changes everything she thought she knew about her mother. The events that follow silence the singing she dreamed of sharing with the world.With her signature metaphors, Gabriel weaves a compelling tale that captures the resilience and strength of both mother and daughter, as secrets revealed test their strong bond and ultimately change their lives forever.Set in 1956 southern Appalachia, Lily’s Song stands on its own, and readers who are new to Gabriel will be drawn into the world she so skillfully depicts. As a sequel, it will captivate fans of The Secret Sense of Wildflower (a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012), who have eagerly awaited more. Daisy’s Fortune: She must return to the place that twice brought her shame. She’ll have one final chance to save someone else. Tennessee, 1982. Wildflower McAllister thought she’d put the past behind her. But when she learns her mother is dying, she digs deep and returns to the small mountain town that stole her innocence and cast her out. And she has no choice but to pull her thirteen-year-old granddaughter Daisy right back into the ghosts of her painful history.As her mother passes, Wildflower’s grief turns to despair when Daisy’s fortune is read, predicting a dark future and the return of sinister threats. With her granddaughter keeping a terrible secret, Wildflower’s distress forces her to call upon the community that rejected her to prevent another tragedy from playing out in front of her eyes.

    Determined to keep the family together, Zetta and their toddlers join Asa and her brothers at the Golden Gate coal camp just before Christmas 1922. She is eight months pregnant. During the first week in the dismal camp, Zetta suffers fearful nightmares of cut trees and fresh dirt--Appalachian signs of trouble. Asa dismisses his wife's pleas to return to their farm, insisting their three-month stay will provide the $400 they need to give their children better lives. Disappointed, Zetta draws strength from her plump red-haired neighbor, Dosha, and the strong willed granny woman, Clarie, who will deliver her baby. And each morning, she thanks the Lord they are one more day closer to home. Or are they?

    You never know what will fall from the sky...In this remarkable novel, George Ella Lyon creates characters rich and vibrant as the Kentucky landscape they call home, touching that secret place in all of us where we wait for love's transforming power...You never know what will fall from the sky...

    Set in the tobacco country of North Carolina in 1937, the story is told through the voice of Roxy Walston, the 20-year-old daughter of the town undertaker, wife of a struggling tobacco farmer, and mother of a two-year-old. When Jack Ruffin, a wanderer looking for work, is sent out to the farm to help Roxy's husband, things are set in place that change Roxy's life forever.

     A few days before Noble Norfleet's eighteenth birthday, his family suffers a violent catastrophe. The sole survivor, Noble throws himself into a reckless affair with his Spanish teacher, whose husband is fighting in Vietnam. When Noble graduates, he enlists as well and, while serving as an army medic, experiences a mysterious vision that seems tied to uncanny events in his recent past. Not until thirty years later -- after a life short on friends and troubled by a compulsion to worship women's bodies -- is Noble challenged to rethink the decades-old mystery of his family tragedy. Faced with an ominous choice, Noble finally comes to accept an enormous duty he's long tried to ignore. Soon, perhaps for the first time, his future seems hopeful.

    It is the story of Skeeter, a young boy growing up in a family poor in material goods but rich in the appreciation of their natural surroundings. The river they live on is the source of life—and death.

    Easter finds her life in the Pentecostal Holiness church and its music, while Anneth dances and drinks in less-than-holy honky-tonks. Will the differences in their young lives and in their very natures tear them apart or will the bond of the sisters prevail? In lucid prose with an ear for the voice of the sisters’ time and place, Silas House brings readers a rich and moving story of coal country.This novel was named The Appalachian Book of the Year, and was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Prize.Blair brings this novel into a beautiful new paperback edition, along with two other Silas House novels, Clay’s Quilt and A Parchment of Leaves. The three novels, which share a common setting and some characters, are companion novels. They may be read individually, in any order, but collectively, they form a rich tableau of life in rural mountain Kentucky in the last century.

    

    Alma was born in 1910 in lower Davidson County, North Carolina—as she says, "fifteen miles south of Lexington, off number 8 Highway, between Newsom and High Rock, near Jackson Hill and Bald Mountain, in the backwoods of nowhere." The fifth of nine children, she lived with her mama and daddy, who were poor sharecroppers, in a small shack-like house on the edge of the large Reid farm that lay between Cabin Creek and Lick Creek on the Yadkin River. In her own words, Alma resurrects now forgotten times and places as she shares with us the everyday life of sharecroppers of the early 1900s. Through vivid descriptions she leads us through their daily customs, folklores and hardships. She speaks of how they had to make do with what they had and how the little that they had was treasured. At age twelve Alma's family left the sharecropping way of life and moved twenty miles north of the backwoods to Lexington, the county seat. In Lexington her life changed dramatically. First, her one room school was replaced with modern schools. Then, at a young age she entered the work place. The biggest change came in her late teens when she met and married Odell Henderson Owen, and in the years that followed, became the mother of eleven children. During the chaotic years of raising eleven children she never forgot her upbringing, how her mama and daddy had instilled in her the importance of family, church and community. Like her daddy, she worked hard, always putting her family's needs first. And in times of personal need, she sought strength through the church . The beauty of this book is in the voice of the book—Alma's voice. Alma tells her story with a warmth that leaves you laughing at times and at other times holding a tissue to your eyes.

    Teenage Sid Tussie sees big changes in his poor Kentucky family when they receive $10,000 insurance money for the death of his uncle in World War II and other greedy relatives scramble to share the wealth.

    But there is treachery afoot, and Cyrus's life is in danger. When Darius, dispossessed prince of the Royal House of Parsa, tries to save the King of Kings, he is arrested and falsely condemned for treason.In a fast paced tale of love, betrayal, war and revenge, Blood of Kings sweeps the reader up on an epic journey from the mud brick cities of Ancient Persia to the burning heart of Pharaoh's Egypt.Packed full of dramatic and authentic battle scenes, it recreates the sweat, blood and fear of ancient warfare, as Persia smashes Egypt's army and brings the reign of the Pharaohs to a violent end.But it is also a book that will delight Herodotus fans, bringing the ancient Greek historian's characters to life like never before, as it follows the doomed 'lost army of Cambyses' into the Libyan Desert, marching towards a fate that would baffle archaeologists for millennia to come.

    "Others have observed the natural man in the American condition before, but nobody has done it with such good humor. Ed McClanahan's good humor both sharpens his eye and gentles his vision. I don't know where else, now, you would find workmanship that is at once so meticulous and so exuberant" - Wendell Berry.