Synopses & Reviews
Celebrated by readers, booksellers, and critics upon its first appearance in 2004, The Green Age of Asher Witherow is a rich, gothic coming-of-age story set during the explosive boom and bust years of an immigrant coal-mining community in California. Here in a dust-shrouded town, amid the bone-breaking labor and dangers of daily life centered on the mines, the people look to a future filled with promise. Meanwhile, roaming the mythic landscape surrounding the town, Asher Witherow, a coal-miner's son, succumbs to the pull of something wild and luminous. Ultimately Asher and the townsfolk must face a series of events at once grim and magical, dreamlike and disastrous.
This special 20th-anniversary edition of Cunningham's highly acclaimed debut features a complete redesign with artwork by Nathan Shields, a prefatory note and coda by Cunningham, and several vivid sections restored from cuts made before the original publication.
Review
“Disturbingly convincing. Too compelling to put down. Unpolluted by careless word choice, emotional flourishes or manipulative clichés. Cunningham’s novel haunts.” —The Salt Lake Tribune
"Gritty. Superb. Grim. Naturalistic. A noteworthy new author."—Publisher's Weekly
“Thoroughly researched and accomplished. Its unusual structure and richly descriptive, evocative language display a mastery that is surprising in a novelistic debut. The darkness of events and the elegance in structure and language will make this book satisfying to readers who enjoyed Robert Morgan's Gap Creek and Annie Dillard's The Living.” —Booklist
About the Author
M. Allen Cunningham is the author of ten books, including a large biographical novel about Rainer Maria Rilke entitled Lost Son, and Q&A, a book inspired by the U.S. quiz show scandals of the 1950s. Over the past twenty years Cunningham's essays and stories have appeared in many distinguished publications.