This novel starts with a heartbreak, and it doesn't get much easier. The people in it are almost all hurting, or soon will be, and Rash draws their suffering through a flame like a silver thread, and he weaves beauty. I was underwhelmed by another of his novels, but I'm glad I gave this novel a chance, it's beautiful and stark and craggy like the Carolina mountains it's set in. What peace or hope emerge are rooted in sorrow and pain, and they feel more precious for it; what answers there are neither simple nor easy. The characters are all well laid out and laid bare, the prose is solid, the ear for dialogue seems spot-on and manages to capture some regionalism without trying to capture dialect--there aren't cute improper words or grammar, here, just some phrasings.
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