World Made Straight

Description: 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."

Brief description: Ron Rash is the author of the prize-winning novels One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River and The World Made Straight, as well as several collections of poetry and short stories. He is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize and the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. For Saints at the River he received the 2004 Weatherford Award for Best Novel and the 2005 SEBA Best Book Award for Fiction. Rash holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University and lives in Clemson, South Carolina.

Review Quotes:

"An intellectually satisfying work of suspense . . . Reminds us of the sort of compelling literature a brave artist can fashion from the shards of such experience."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Ron Rash writes some of the most memorable novels of this young century . . . No writer since the late Larry Brown has handled the raw grit of country people as truthfully as Rash. . . . At once uplifting, harrowing, and unforgettable."
--The News & Observer

"[Ron Rash's] novels are complex and compelling, told in graceful, conscientious prose, and The World Made Straight is his finest yet."
--The Charlotte Observer

"This is the third novel by Ron Rash that has brought my life to a grinding halt--but to praise Rash simply as a powerful storyteller would be to overlook his gifts as a profoundly ethical writer and, at the same time, a poet with a fine and tender eye for the beauty of nature. What I love and admire most of all about this book, however, is its fierce confrontation of a human dilemma that has sparked too many of the world's most violent tragedies: the burning question of just how much allegiance we owe family and community, including the ghosts from our past."
--Julia Glass, author of Three Junes

"The World Made Straight is a wonderful, heartbreaking, heart-healing kind of work, a work of genius--genius and insight and poetry and the kind of language that whispers to me like music coming back off dense wet hills and upturned faces."
--Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina

"Rash writes with beauty and simplicity, understanding his characters with a poet's eye and heart and telling their tale with a poet's tongue."
--William Gay, author of Provinces of Night

"Ron Rash writes so well about real people, people one paycheck short of extinction, that you care what happens to his characters in every clause. In A World Made Straight, he shows how much trouble a poor ol' boy can get in, just trying to catch a fish or two. Even in this novel, his words sound like poetry."
--Rick Bragg, author of All Over but the Shoutin' and Ava's Man

"Deft, intelligent, crisp, sensual and lyrical, The World Made Straight is the best work yet by a wonderful writer. This is why we read books: to encounter a great story told well."
--Rick Bass, author of Winter: Notes from Montana