Description: Written with a gritty, unflinching realism reminiscent of the work of Larry Brown and Cormac McCarthy, the stories in Upheaval prove that Holbrook is not only a faithful chronicler and champion of Appalachia's working poor but one of the most gifted writers of his generation.
Brief description: Chris Holbrook, a native of Knott County, Kentucky, received the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing for Hell and Ohio: Stories of Southern Appalachia. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Holbrook is associate professor of English at Morehead State University.
Review Quotes:
""Holbrook is not confined by his Appalachian roots, but rather relates that world with all working-class people and writing. Reading these stories is as though we've hung around the local diner in Hazard, Kentucky, watching and listening to the locals, then followed each of them home with these tales of their lives. Holbrook's style is painfully close and real, its beauty grabs you like the face of a child or an old person. This book wins our total attention and brings our mind and heart into a new understanding of what it means to exist in a specific and well-drawn time and place."-- New York Journal of Books" --