Description: Appalachia Now hops on the back of a motorcycle for a wild ride through the hills we know best�Vicco, Hazard, branches, mine access roads. Fiddle tunes and black lung and the photoelectric gleam of stars. But these haunting stories take us way beyond the familiar. They are as skillfully wrought with the visible world as they are with the luminous being in the hollow of a cupped hand. I couldn�t put this book down and when I did, my heart ached to step back inside the pages. Karen McElmurray
Brief description: Chris Offutt grew up in Haldeman, Ky, population 200. He has published five books about Kentuckians, and more than a hundred short stories and essays. A memoir about his father's career in porn is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster, followed by a Luck, a collection of stories, and Hit Monkey, a novel. He's also written screenplays for True Blood, Weeds, Treme, and several pilots. His work has appeared in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. He lives in rural Mississippi and can be reached at offutt.chris1@gmail.com.
Review Quotes: Appalachia Now hops on the back of a motorcycle for a wild ride through the hills we know best�Vicco, Hazard, branches, mine access roads. Fiddle tunes and black lung and the photoelectric gleam of stars. But these haunting stories take us way beyond the familiar. They are as skillfully wrought with the visible world as they are with the luminous being in the hollow of a cupped hand. I couldn�t put this book down and when I did, my heart ached to step back inside the pages. Karen McElmurray
In the Appalachian Fiction Series...This book is a sequel to our Degrees of Elevation anthology. �Degrees of Elevation provides a variety of characters portrayed in their deepest and most exposed moments. You aren't likely to forget their stories�.a wonderful collection that deserves to be read, savored, and remembered.� From New York Journal of Book Review// �Hard, brilliant, and dark as coal, this brand new and necessary volume captures Appalachia today, a place where the old bedrock verities of family, community, belief, work, and the earth itself are all in painful �Upheaval�--to use the title of Chris Holbrook's story herein. From manic to elegiac to rough, raw, beautiful, and heartbreaking, these stories will strike the reader as both absolutely true and as unforgettable, like the high pure ring of an ax on a cold winter morning, vibrating across distance, hanging in the air long afterward.� Lee Smith, author of Saving Grace