The Cove - (P.S.) by Ron Rash (Paperback)

About the Book

"Set during World War One, The Cove is a novel that speaks intimately to today's politics. Beautifully written, tough, raw, uncompromising, entirely new. Ron Rash is a writer's writer who writes for others."--Colum McCann

"Ron Rash is a writer of both the darkly beautiful and the sadly true; The Cove solidifies his reputation as one of our very finest novelists."--Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls

Here is a magnificent tale that captures the wondrous beauty of nature and love--and the darkness of superstition and fear--from one of America's most exciting contemporary novelists. With The Cove, Ron Rash, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Serena, returns to the Appalachian milieu he has previously so memorably evoked. A two-time O. Henry Prize winner for his short fiction--and recipient of the 2010 Frank O'Connor International Story Award and the 2010 SIBA Book Award for his story collection Burning Bright--Rash can expect more honors for The Cove, a novel that brilliantly explores often dangerous notions of patriotism during wartime. This story of a love affair doomed in the rising turmoil of WWI resonates powerfully in today's world.

Book Synopsis

"Set during World War One, The Cove is a novel that speaks intimately to today's politics. Beautifully written, tough, raw, uncompromising, entirely new. Ron Rash is a writer's writer who writes for others."
--Colum McCann

"Ron Rash is a writer of both the darkly beautiful and the sadly true; The Cove solidifies his reputation as one of our very finest novelists."
--Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls

Here is a magnificent tale that captures the wondrous beauty of nature and love--and the darkness of superstition and fear--from one of America's most exciting contemporary novelists. With The Cove, Ron Rash, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Serena, returns to the Appalachian milieu he has previously so memorably evoked. A two-time O. Henry Prize winner for his short fiction--and recipient of the 2010 Frank O'Connor International Story Award and the 2010 SIBA Book Award for his story collection Burning Bright--Rash can expect more honors for The Cove, a novel that brilliantly explores often dangerous notions of patriotism during wartime. This story of a love affair doomed in the rising turmoil of WWI resonates powerfully in today's world.

From the Back Cover

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.

Then it happens-a stranger appears, carrying nothing but a silver flute and a note explaining that his name is Walter and he is mute-and Laurel experiences true companionship and happiness for the first time.

But Walter harbors a secret that could destroy everything. In a time of uncertainty, when fear and danger reign, Laurel and Walter will discover that love alone may not be enough to protect them.

Review Quotes

"Ron Rash is a writer of both the darkly beautiful and the sadly true; his new novel, The Cove, solidifies his reputation as one of our very finest novelists." - Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls
"I wish the whole world spoke the way Ron Rash's characters do. Read him for his poetry and great humanity. Just read him." - Jennifer Haigh, author of Faith
Praise for Burning Bright "Ron Rash was the seasoned author of nine books of fiction and poetry before his 10th, the stunning 2008 Serena, established him as one of the best American novelists of his day. With its stark Appalachian setting, piercing language and coolly ferocious title character, Serena was a big book filled with bleakly beautiful details. Mr. Rash's artistry was blinding enough to eclipse his craftsmanship. But the skill with which his tales are constructed is more apparent in Burning Bright... these paired down short stories make it much easier to see how expertly Mr. Rash fine-tunes his work... elegantly sophisticated work... enormously effective... another instance of Mr. Rash's tactical precision... remarkable stories... Mr. Rash certainly knows how to rivet attention." - Janet Maslin, New York Times
"For the past 15 years, Ron Rash has been carving out a position as one of the best writers in America writing about Appalachia... a fascinating place for a writer to inhabit. This is what Rash does best, and his reputation is assured with his latest story collection, Burning Bright.. The Ascent' is a heartbreakingly simple tale...but it still plows right into you... [Rash] exhibit[s] an astonishing range... powerful and affecting... Burning Bright is raw, honest and assured, the work of a talented writer. His characters fight through their tiny lives, proud and indomitable, like the land itself." - San Francisco Chronicle
"Ron Rash brings his poet's eye to an unforgiving world in Burning Bright, a finely crafted, understated collection of 12 stories... Rash doesn't need much to tell a story --- in fact, emptiness brings out the best in him. Rash writes the way the old bluegrass musicians sing: in a stark, high-lonesome voice capturing the yearning and despair of characters who have lost almost everything but their pride... In these spare and haunting stories Rash restores the humanity that trumps the meanness in this world. It may be a thin shard of hope, but it still burns bright." - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"The Cove is a beautifully written book that uses heartfelt characters to describe the difficult life of a lonely, misunderstood young woman." - The Desert News
"Ron Rash has a deft touch in describing both landscape and household, and his use of evocatively specific regionalisms never edges into condescension or vernacular." - Open Letters Monthly / Like Fire (blog)
"Lonely young woman meets mysterious stranger. What might have been trite and formulaic is anything but in Rash's fifth novel, a dark tale of Appalachian superstition and jingoism so good it gives you chills... Even better than the bestselling Serena (2008), for here Rash has elevated melodrama to tragedy." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Ron Rash always satisfies. . . His newest novel,, reinforces this assessment. Rash still knows how to delivers a terrifically searing blow.” - Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Rash is particularly good at capturing the hazy space where otherworldly phantoms mingle with plain old human meanness...Rash never lays down a dull or clunky line...at the very end...these pages ignite, and suddenly we're racing through a conflagration of violence that no one seems able to control except Rash." - Washington Post
"A gently beautiful new novel...Rash, a native of Appalachia, has written a southern tragedy, with a self-consciously Shakespearean structure and economy.... [A] powerful novel, with some of the mysterious moral weight of Carson McCullers, along with a musical voice that belongs to Rash alone." - USA Today
"Rash masterfully poises suspense elements and gives full reign to other strengths: language, awe, symbolism, cast of characters and mountain knowledge.... It's a book you could read again to savor the writing. Rash has found a subject that compellingly represents his vision--beauty shadowed by foreboding; and he's made it symphonic." - Asheville Citizen-Times
"The Cove, the laconically beautiful new novel by Ron Rash, actually is lyrical, in the dictionary sense of having to do with song or poetry. Rash's gorgeous prose is as close to song as you'll find without an accompanying score . . ." - New Orleans Times-Picayune
"This book ranks among the best backwoods fiction since 2006's Winter's Bone.... [A] gripping novel...[not] just an elegant work of literary fiction, written in a voice that's hauntingly simple and Southern; it's also a riveting mystery." - Entertainment Weekly, Grade: A
"When writers gather and tipple while discussing those not present at the table but admired, the name Ron Rash quickly comes up. He is a double-threat writer, great in both poetry and fiction. He uses language with such apparently effortless skill that it is as though he found words in his barn as a child and has been training them to fit his needs ever since. There's not much he doesn't know about humans in turmoil, or his region, a place where nothing ever changes until all of a sudden it does and often too much. Rash throws a big shadow now and it's only going to get bigger and soon." - Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone
"Warning: If you're going to begin reading The Cove, be prepared to miss your appointment and cancel your dinner plans, because it's one of those books that grabs you from the first page and won't let go. Rash is a hypnotist, a magician, a conjurer, and that rarest of wordsmiths, a masterful storyteller." - Jonathan Evison, author of West of Here
"Rash effortlessly summons the rugged Appalachian landscape as well as the small-mindedness and xenophobia of a country in the grip of patriotic fervor, drawing striking parallels to the heated political rhetoric of today. A powerful novel that skillfully overlays its tragic love story with pointed social commentary." - Booklist (starred review)
"Set during World War One, The Cove is a novel that speaks intimately to today's politics. Beautifully written, tough, raw, uncompromising, entirely new. Ron Rash is a writer's writer who writes for others." - Colum McCann
"Mr. Rash's writing is so richly atmospheric...as he has demonstrated elsewhere, notably in the dazzling 2008 novel Serena, [Rash] can make words take wing...A breathless sequence of events lead the book to its devastating final sentence. And that sentence affirms Mr. Rash's reputation for writerly miracles when it manages an uncanny feat: fusing the cove, the Vaterland, the parakeets and the lovebirds into one perfectly wrenching last thought." - Janet Maslin, New York Times
"Mr. Rash's writing is so richly atmospheric...[he] can make words take wing.... A breathless sequence of events lead the book to its devastating final sentence. And that sentence affirms Mr. Rash's reputation for writerly miracles." - Janet Maslin, New York Times
"[B]eautifully crafted...In [the cove's] story, we hear the unique voice of a region made all the more poignant for how few will ever hear it exactly this way again." - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"In Rash's skilled hands, even farm chores take on a meditative beauty." - People
"In addition to writing short stories, Rash is also a fine poet, and he brings a poet's concision and elliptical tendencies to this novel. As a result, these scenes and conversations constantly suggest more than they show, a technique that renders them alluring, sometimes erotic, often frightening...The blind hag who delivers prophesies to the lumbermen, the insane preacher who warns of impending doom, even the portentous eclipse of the moon -- all these details rise up just right....it's too hypnotic to break away from. Innocent people are in peril, and calamity seems as unstoppable as the millions of board feet Pemberton's men send surging down the river. And the final chapter is as flawless and captivating as anything I've read this year, a perfectly creepy shock that will leave you hearing nothing but the wind between the stumps." - Washington Post Book World
"Ron Rash uses language with such apparently effortless skill that it is as though he found words in his barn as a child and has been training them to fit his needs ever since....Rash throws a big shadow now and it's only going to get bigger and soon." - Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone
"Rash develops his story masterfully; the large cast of characters is superbly realized, as is the xenophobia that accompanies the war, and Rash brings the various narrative threads together at the conclusion of the novel with formidable strength and pathos." - Library Journal (starred review)
"The gripping plot, gothic atmosphere, and striking descriptions, in particular of the dismal cove, make this a top-notch story of an unusual place and its fated and fearful denizens." - Publishers Weekly (starred review), Pick of the Week
Praise for Serena: "A gorgeous, brutal writer." - Richard Price, bestselling author of Lush Life
"Rash's novel is a masterfully written condemnation of the logging industry and the damage it continues to wreak. The book is consistently heartbreaking in its portrayal of what humans are capable of. . . . Rash's wealth of Smoky Mountain knowledge meshes seamlessly with an occasional touch of magical realism, which might have been a curious choice, but is a call-out to local superstitions. This is a story that's sprawling, engrossing and-from time to time-nightmarish. The tension builds so well that occasionally you just want whatever monstrosity is approaching to be over. But once you're in this world, you just have to bide your time and wait for the events to play out, for the trees to fall, for lives to be lost, all in the name of greed." - San Francisco Chronicle
"Serena is Ron Rash's fourth novel. For those unfamiliar with the elegantly fine-tuned voice of this Appalachian poet and storyteller, a writer whose reputation has been largely regional despite an O. Henry Prize and other honors, it will prompt instant interest in his first, second and third. . . . With bone-chilling aplomb, linguistic grace and the piercing fatalism of an Appalachian ballad, Mr. Rash lets the Pembertons' new union generate ripple after ripple of astonishment." - Janet Maslin, New York Times
"Love gone seriously wrong is the central theme of Serena, the latest novel from Ron Rash (One Foot in Eden). The main character, Serena Pemberton, embodies that old axiom: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Or even disappointed, as in the case of Serena, a timber baron's wife in North Carolina circa 1929. Her husband, George, tries desperately to keep Serena happy - emphasis on desperate. This logging soap opera has it all: sex, lies, deceit, betrayal, murder. The rugged Carolina terrain plays a key supporting role. The climatic ending embodies another saw: Revenge is a dish best served cold." - USA Today
"Finely drawn stories...Burning Bright is a collection to be read for the quality of the prose, which reflects Rash's intimate knowledge of this region and its history. His heart is clearly in this place -- the dialect is pitch-perfect and he is a skillful translator of the inner worlds and difficult lifestyles of the unique, hardened-by-necessity breed of people who have populated the area, past and present." - The Oregonian (Portland)
"A slender set of spare and menacing depictions of the unforgiving ways of life in rural Appalachia, Burning Bright finds a narrow sweet spot between Raymond Carver's minimalism and William Faulkner's Gothic... Rash gets deep inside the peculiar psychology and emotional idiosyncrasies of the mountain South in all their pride, superstition and propensity for violence..." - Washington Post
"Exquisite ... a dozen tragically beautiful stories... Rash is a praised writer, drawing comparisons to John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy, and those comparisons ring true here. In 'Hard Times, ' he produces the first of many images that sear into the brain... It's haunting images like that, horrific, but utterly believable because of the desperate world Rash creates, that stay with the reader long after this book is finished." - Minneapolis Star Tribune