Above the Waterfall - Softcover

A persuasive, revealing writer of exquisite sentences . . . poised on the cusp of becoming a household name. Comparisons have been made to William Faulkner's southern Gothic and Ernest Hemingway's brevity, but the voice of this Appalachian writer is singular, often quiet and frequently uncompromising * * Irish Times * * Rash is an enormously gifted storyteller . . . one of the few writers at work today with the insight, the talent and the vision to show us how sometimes, for all our sorry shortcomings, we're able to achieve a certain redemption through our capacity for kindness and decency * * Washington Post * * A writer's writer who writes for others -- Colum McCann One of the great American authors at work today -- Janet Maslin * * New York Times * * Above the Waterfall succeeds on every level. As a satisfying crime story it absolutely delivers. As a meditation on the changing nature of our relationship with landscape, it is sublime. A masterclass of precise and evocative writing . . . powerful and compelling * * Big Issue * * A gorgeous, brutal writer -- Richard Price Ron Rash is a writer of both the darkly beautiful and the sadly true . . . One of our very finest novelists -- Richard Russo Magnificent is suddenly too small a word * * Irish Times * * Finds a narrow sweet spot between Raymond Carver and William Faulkner. * * Washington Post * * Rash's prose is elegant, suggestive, and Hardyesque. * * Boston Globe * * Combining suspense with acute observations and flashing insights, Rash tells a seductive and disquieting tale about our intrinsic attachment to and disastrous abuse of the land and our betrayal of our best selves * * Starred Booklist * * Alternates between traditional prose and a poetic voice * * Wall Street Journal * * The book begins as a lyrical, far-reaching reflection on nature and modern-day loneliness . . . Beneath the surface, the novel contemplates more timeless questions about human frailty, the divinity of nature and the legacies of our native landscapes . . . A hybrid of prose poetry, nature writing and literary mystery . . . Exhilarating and beguiling * * Atlanta Journal * * The anguish of modern American life is faced here . . . the loss of sons in pointless desert wars, divorce, the fears that attend retirement and old age, murderous school sieges, homegrown terrorism. All these matters are addressed with Rash's familiar mastery of storytelling * * Australian * * One of his most successful ventures into poetic humanism * * Publishers Weekly * * Rash, a 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, is one of our undisputed Appalachian laureates, in company with Robert Morgan, Lee Smith, Fred Chappell, and Mark Powell * * The Millions * * [T]hick with atmosphere, lyrical prose, and a visceral sense of place... Rash has crafted the finest prose of his career... another quiet, haunting ode to the natural beauty of the mountains * * BookPage * * A national treasure * * Literary Hub * *

Nothing else comes so I set the notebook beside me. What else is here? I ask myself and listen. This section of stream purls and riffles amid small stones. What word might be made for what I hear . . . Above the Waterfall is the story of Sheriff Les Clary. A man on the verge of retirement, he is plunged into deep and dangerous waters by one final case. A case that will draw him to the lyrical beauty of his surroundings and, in doing so, force him to come to terms with his own past. Echoing the heartbreaking beauty of William Faulkner and the spiritual isolation of Michel Faber, Above the Waterfall is as poetic as it is haunting.