COVE (P.S.) - Softcover

"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)

"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

"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

"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)

"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)

"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

"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 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

"In Rash's skilled hands, even farm chores take on a meditative beauty."--People

Living deep within a cove in the Appalachians of North Carolina during World War I, Laurel Shelton, a lonely young woman branded as a witch, finally finds the happiness she deserves in Walter, a mysterious stranger who is mute, but their love might not be enough to protect them from a devastating secret. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.