The World Made Straight

The World Made Straight
Author: Ron Rash
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2007-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429900857

Vivid, harrowing yet ultimately hopeful, The World Made Straight is Ron Rash's subtlest exploration yet of the painful conflict between the bonds of home and the desire for independence. NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING NOAH WYLE, JEREMY IRVINE, MINKA KELLY, ADELAIDE CLEMENS, STEVE EARLE, AND HALEY JOEL OSMENT. "ONE OF THE MAJOR WRITERS OF OUR TIME."—THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION Travis Shelton is seventeen the summer he wanders into the woods onto private property outside his North Carolina hometown, discovers a grove of marijuana large enough to make him some serious money, and steps into the jaws of a bear trap. After hours of passing in and out of consciousness, Travis is discovered by Carlton Toomey, the wise and vicious farmer who set the trap to protect his plants, and Travis's confrontation with the subtle evils within his rural world has begun. Before long, Travis has moved out of his parents' home to live with Leonard Shuler, a one-time schoolteacher who lost his job and custody of his daughter years ago, when he was framed by a vindictive student. Now Leonard lives with his dogs and his sometime girlfriend in a run-down trailer outside town, deals a few drugs, and studies journals from the Civil War. Travis becomes his student, of sorts, and the fate of these two outsiders becomes increasingly entwined as the community's terrible past and corrupt present bear down on each of them from every direction, leading to a violent reckoning—not only with Toomey, but with the legacy of the Civil War massacre that, even after a century, continues to divide an Appalachian community.

The World Made Straight

The World Made Straight
Author: Ron Rash
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2006-04-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780805078664

In an Appalachian community haunted by the legacy of a Civil War massacre, a rebellious young man struggles to escape the violence that would bind him to the past in this vivid, harrowing, yet ultimately hopeful new novel by the author of "Saints at the River."

The World Made Straight

The World Made Straight
Author: Ron Rash
Publisher: Canongate Books
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1782112766

Summer in Madison County. Seventeen year old Travis Shelton cannot see a way out of his small town - until he discovers a grove of marijuana in the woods that could make him some serious money. But Travis has stumbled across more than drugs. His discovery is the first unwitting step in a series that will lead him to the back to the savage violence and betrayal lying in the community's history, and to the heart of corruption in its present. Vivid and unsettling, The World Made Straight is a powerful exploration of the secrets that bind us together and drive us apart.

And the Crooked Places Made Straight

And the Crooked Places Made Straight
Author: David Chalmers
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2012-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 142140821X

“Marvelously comprehensive and superbly written. An exceptionally valuable overview of the 1960s, replete with astute interpretations and commentary.” —David J. Garrow, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference David Chalmers’s widely acclaimed overview of the 1960s describes how the civil rights movement touched off a growing challenge to traditional values and arrangements. Chalmers recounts the judicial revolution that set national standards for race, politics, policing, and privacy. He examines the long, losing war on poverty and the struggle between the media and the government over the war in Vietnam. He follows feminism’s “second wave” and the emergence of the environmental, consumer, and citizen action movements. He also explores the worlds of rock, sex, and drugs, and the entwining of the youth culture, the counterculture, and the American marketplace. This newly revised edition covers the conservative counter-revolution and cultural wars. It carries the legacy of the 1960s forward: from Tom Hayden’s idealistic 1962 Port Huron Statement through Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America” and Grover Norquist’s twenty-first century “Tax Payer’s Protection Pledge.” “With its hint of passion and irony, the title of David Chalmers’s book aptly captures the complexities of his study. Beautifully written, it is more than a recitation of the actors and events of the 1960s. It helps us to make sense of the decade.” —Dan T. Carter, author of Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South

Where All Light Tends to Go

Where All Light Tends to Go
Author: David Joy
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2015-03-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0698182588

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DEVIL'S PEAK—starring Billy Bob Thornton, Robin Wright, Hopper Penn, and Jackie Earle Haley! In the country-noir tradition of Winter's Bone meets Breaking Bad, a savage and beautiful story of a young man seeking redemption—a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. The area surrounding Cashiers, North Carolina, is home to people of all kinds, but the world that Jacob McNeely lives in is crueler than most. His father runs a methodically organized meth ring, with local authorities on the dime to turn a blind eye to his dealings. Having dropped out of high school and cut himself off from his peers, Jacob has been working for this father for years, all on the promise that his payday will come eventually. The only joy he finds comes from reuniting with Maggie, his first love, and a girl clearly bound for bigger and better things than their hardscrabble town. Jacob has always been resigned to play the cards that were dealt him, but when a fatal mistake changes everything, he’s faced with a choice: stay and appease his father, or leave the mountains with the girl he loves. In a place where blood is thicker than water and hope takes a back seat to fate, Jacob wonders if he can muster the strength to rise above the only life he’s ever known. “Remarkable...This isn’t your ordinary coming-of-age novel, but with his bone-cutting insights into these men and the region that bred them, Joy makes it an extraordinarily intimate experience.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review “Lyrical, propulsive, dark and compelling. Joy knows well the grit and gravel of his world, the soul and blemishes of the place.”—Daniel Woodrell

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Author: Ron Rash
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2013-02-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062202731

From Ron Rash, PEN / Faulkner Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Serena, comes a new collection of unforgettable stories set in Appalachia that focuses on the lives of those haunted by violence and tenderness, hope and fear—spanning the Civil War to the present day. The darkness of Ron Rash’s work contrasts with its unexpected sensitivity and stark beauty in a manner that could only be accomplished by this master of the short story form. Nothing Gold Can Stay includes 14 stories, including Rash’s “The Trusty,” which first appeared in The New Yorker.

Chemistry and Other Stories

Chemistry and Other Stories
Author: Ron Rash
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2007-04-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466828064

Chemistry and Other Stories, A Picador Paperback Original From the pre-eminent chronicler of this forgotten territory, stories that range over one hundred years in the troubled, violent emergence of the New South. In Ron Rash's stories, spanning the entire twentieth century in Appalachia, rural communities struggle with the arrival of a new era. Three old men stalk the shadow of a giant fish no one else believes is there. A man takes up scuba diving in the town reservoir to fight off a killing depression. A grieving mother leads a surveyor into the woods to name once and for all the county where her son was murdered by thieves. In the Appalachia of Ron Rash's stories, the collision of the old and new south, of antique and modern, resonate with the depth and power of ancient myths.

One Foot in Eden

One Foot in Eden
Author: Ron Rash
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2004-01-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780312423056

Will Alexander, sheriff of a small town in southern Appalachia, is baffled by a murder case with no body and no suspect, and sets out to find the truth about what really happened to a local thug.

The Cove

The Cove
Author: Ron Rash
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2012-11-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062267302

The New York Times bestselling author of Serena returns to Appalachia, this time at the height of World War I, with the story of a blazing but doomed love affair caught in the turmoil of a nation at war Deep in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina lies the cove, a dark, forbidding place where spirits and fetches wander, and even the light fears to travel. Or so the townsfolk of Mars Hill believe–just as they know that Laurel Shelton, the lonely young woman who lives within its shadows, is a witch. Alone except for her brother, Hank, newly returned from the trenches of France, she aches for her life to begin. Then it happens–a stranger appears, carrying nothing but a beautiful silver flute and a note explaining that his name is Walter, he is mute, and is bound for New York. Laurel finds him in the woods, nearly stung to death by yellow jackets, and nurses him back to health. As the days pass, Walter slips easily into life in the cove and into Laurel's heart, bringing her the only real happiness she has ever known. But Walter harbors a secret that could destroy everything–and danger is closer than they know. Though the war in Europe is near its end, patriotic fervor flourishes thanks to the likes of Chauncey Feith, an ambitious young army recruiter who stokes fear and outrage throughout the county. In a time of uncertainty, when fear and ignorance reign, Laurel and Walter will discover that love may not be enough to protect them. This lyrical, heart-rending tale, as mesmerizing as its award-winning predecessor Serena, shows once again this masterful novelist at the height of his powers.