Mountain Fiction

Novels

The Dollmaker by Harriette Louisa Simpson Arnow. New York: Macmillan, 1954, reprinted by Avon in 1972 and by the University Press of Kentucky in 1985. 608 pages.
This powerful and penetrating novel follows the protagonist, Gertie Nevels, as she follows her husband from their Eastern Kentucky farm to Detroit during World War II. Her dismay over city ways illuminates the values of her native mountain culture and the oppression she suffers by virtue of her gender. From the opening scene where she performs an emergency tracheotomy on her own child until the climax when she destroys an artistic creation which has obsessed her, this book is fast-moving, compelling and thought-provoking. **Click here to order**

The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974. 223 pages.
Sweeping in its wisdom and understanding of rural life in the hills, this novel takes place on one of the last days of Jack Beecham’s life. Here Old Jack reflects upon his commitment to the land and his complex and sometimes rewarding relationships with his wife, his lover, his daughter, his hired hands and his neighbors. This novel is widely viewed as one of the very best of Wendell Berry’s prose fiction works. Berry’s impressive body of prose fiction work has created a consistent cast of characters and a compelling setting: Port William, Kentucky, reminiscent of Port Royal where Wendell Berry and his wife, Tanya, farm organically with horses. **Click here to order**

Poetry

Collected Poems, 1957-1982 by Wendell Berry. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985. 268 pages.
An fine essayist and prose fiction writer as well as a poet, Wendell Berry farms organically with horses in the Kentucky River Valley. Although these poems are often didactic, they are never shallow. Nature and simple living permeate their perspective but never limit it. **Click here to order**

Green River: New and Selected Poems by Robert Morgan. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1991. 88 pages.
Robert Morgan grew up on a working class farm in Western North Carolina and has taught for decades at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His poetry primarily focuses on rural Southern themes and images. **Click here to order**

Spring Garden:New and Selected Poems by Fred Chappell. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995. 157 pages.
Fred Chappell grew up in Canton, North Carolina, and teaches at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Always down-to-earth and accessible on the most straight-forward level, this poetry sometimes also has allegorical meanings and literary illusions which enrich it for those who share Chappell’s erudition and knowledge of world literature. **Click here to order**

Short Stories

The Hawk’s Done Gone by Mildred Haun. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1940, reprinted in an expanded edition by Vanderbilt University Press, 1968 and McNaughton, 1984. 356 pages.
Thoroughly embued with the most old-fashioned head-of-the-holler folkways and metaphors, these stories are all told from the perspective of an old granny woman about the people whose births she presided over as a midwife. Widely recognized as a unique contribution to regional literature and deeply admired for its reflection of traditional values and ways of life this book will always be an integral part of Appalachian literature. **Click here to order**

Kentucky Straight by Chris Offutt. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. 167 pages.
"Horseweed" in this collection is one of the finest contemporary stories about marijuana cultivation in the mountains. Other stories share with it strong themes and a compelling individualistic writing style which has made Offutt one of the greatest regional literary successes of the 1990s. **Click here to order**

The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake by Breece Pancake. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983, reprinted by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984. 178 pages.
The author of this collection committed suicide at the age of 26 before this, his only book, was published, yet it has remained in print ever since, for almost fifteen years. That is a tribute to Pancakes way not only with words, but with themes, characters and settings as well. **Click here to order**