Burning Bright: Stories [Hardcover]

Ron Rash (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 9, 2010

A FARMER and his wife fall on hard times. They haven't lost everything the way others have, but they have lost enough. Their hope for a better future comes under threat when they discover an intruder on their land. A WOMAN from a small town marries an outsider. Her love for him battles with her suspicions that he is the source of the fires ravaging the mountains. A YOUNG BOY, neglected by his parents, sits in the remains of a crashed plane and lovingly tends to two frozen bodies. These remarkable stories and many more can be found in Burning Bright, an award-winning collection that captures the complexities of a place and conjures characters that will burn bright in your mind long after you have finished reading.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The latest from Rash (Serena), a collection, begins with Hard Times, in which a struggling farmer in the midst of the Great Depression tries to discover who's stealing eggs from his henhouse without offending the volatile pride of his impoverished neighbors. The present-day stories are also situated in poverty-plagued small towns whose young citizens are being lost to meth addictions: in Back of Beyond, a pawnshop owner has to intervene when he learns his nephew Danny has kicked his parents out of their house and sold off their furniture to support his habit; in The Ascent, a young boy lovingly tends to a couple of corpses—victims of a small plane crash. Rash's stories are calm, dark and overtly symbolic, sometimes so literal they verge on redundant: in Dead Confederates, when a man falls into the Confederate tomb he's looting, the graveyard caretaker notes: I'd say he's helped dig his own grave. With a mastery of dialogue, Rash has written a tribute and a pre-emptive eulogy for the hardworking, straight-talking farmers of the Appalachian Mountains. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

Born and raised in the Carolinas, Rash—also a poet and novelist (Serena, 2008)—has become known as a writer of Appalachia. Although these 12 stories are set in that region, in times ranging from the Civil War to today, they display a universality that goes beyond time or place. Rash’s characters, often struggling to make their way in the world, act as they believe they must to save what is dear to them—family members, a marriage, a heritage, a nation, and even a neighbor’s child. In the title story, a woman widowed and remarried to a younger handyman drifter lies to protect her husband, despite what she knows in her heart. In this, as in other stories, Rash leaves the reader with thoughts of the near-inevitable aftermath and its consequences. There is a purity and precision in Rash’s prose, reminiscent of his poetry, that makes these stories as deceptively easy to read as they are hard to forget. This is memorable, unflinching short fiction by a master of the form. --Michele Leber

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; First Edition edition (March 9, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061804118
• ISBN-13: 978-0061804113
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #807,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Finalist and New York Times bestselling novel, Serena, in addition to three other prizewinning novels, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; three collections of poems; and four collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and Chrmistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O.Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars superb intense Appalachia collection March 11, 2010

By Harriet Klausner #1 HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover

This superb intense twelve story collection focuses on the people of Appalachia who though impoverished refuse to give up their pride even as they seek a shimmer of happiness. The well written stories are very short with the longest being 30 pages; yet each goes deep baring the darkness of the soul with slight flickers of light that sputter allegorically.

Opening with "Hard Times" in which a Depression Era farmer's wife insists the impoverished neighbors' dog is stealing their eggs; when confronted the patriarch neighbor slices the throat of his canine to prove he was not the thief. Fishing for the felon proves shockingly successful. In sixteen pages, Ron Rash provides a cast of poor people struggling with survival but doing so with pride. That theme is throughout the anthology whether it is the young turning to meth "Back of Beyond" in which a pawn shop owner knows who the addicts are as they are his best customers including his nephew. "The Ascent" focuses on a tweener who makes a family with corpses in a crashed plane he finds. Whether he centers on the Civil War with "Dead Confederates" and "Lincolnites", the Great Depression ("Hard Times") or the present, Mr. Nash provides his readers with a profound look at the people of Appalachia where pride and hard work battle poverty and drugs.

Harriet Klausner

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Each story is a gem April 1, 2010

By BeachReader

Format:Hardcover

I think Ron Rash is such a fine writer, with an elegance that belies the grittiness of his stories. He obviously knows his subject matter well and is able to make us feel his characters' pain and the toughness of their lives. His stories all have a strong sense of place and show his years of Appalachian heritage. Imbued with a quiet beauty, each story paints a complete picture.

His beautiful and lyrical language just grabs the reader and does not let go. Here is something that just was so touching:

"He imagined towns where hungry men hung on boxcars looking for work that couldn't be found, shacks where families lived who didn't even have one swaybacked milk cow. He imagined cities where blood stained the sidewalks beneath buildings tall as ridges. He tried to imagine a place worse than where he was."

The stories in this book span the time from the Civil War through the present time and touch on a variety of subjects: poverty, family, job loss. Each story shows its characters' fortitude and endurance...and the grace with which they carry on every day.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Studies in desperation, resilience, and hope April 4, 2010

By R. Cooper

Format:Hardcover

No other writer in America can show us that instant when a desperate heart breaks in stories at once stark and tender like Ron Rash does. His characters are sometimes aware that they are on the edge of sanity or that they are about to make a painful discovery, but they just as often miss the moment and know that another chance for redemption may never again pause for their hesistant grasp. They are caught up in drifts of fate and cannot remember making that first misstep, they make bad decisions and spend their rueful lives wishing their deeds undone, or they realize that no one lives a simple life, that every passing moment is another loss, and that the only viable responses may be to laugh, perform a small act of kindness, and try to endure.

Despite the grim and sometimes violent circumstances in which his stories emerge, Rash has an amazing sense of humor. Who else can make you laugh about meth addicts who rob their families, men who would rather see his children starve than accept a handout, and thieves desecrating confederate graves?

This is an extraordinary collection of stories that will make your own imagination burn bright.