Synopses & Reviews
This is why I have had to come back now, traveling these dusty old back roads one more time. For I mean to tell my story, and I mean to tell the truth. I am a believer in the Word, and I am not going to flinch from telling it, not even the terrible things
Florida Grace Shepherd, eleventh child of the itinerant, snake-handling Reverend Virgil Shepherd, grew up traveling across the Appalachian South. In her heart, she raged against the constant hardships that her parents insisted were part of the Lords plan. As she got older, she learned of her fathers backsliding” with other women, and watched as it drove her mother to an early grave.
Returning to Scrabble Creek, where her happiest memories took place, Grace recounts the harrowing journey of her life with the Lord, from her travels with her father to the day she finally broke free of him only to marry another preacher much older than she, as well as her own stumbles along the rocky and winding path to her own redemption.
Review
"The closest thing to reading this would be reading Madame Bovary while listening to Loretta Lynn."
Review
“Outstanding…Marvelous…Utterly enjoyable…One of the finest collections of short prose I’ve read since Bobbie Ann Mason.”
Review
“These stories capture the flavor of the South…With clever prose in ‘Blue Wedding,’ she is able to convey the poetic chatter of Southern voices that separates one class from another…Complex characters and surprising plot twists appear in the captivating ‘Live Bottomless.’ Smith has become a master at coupling tragedy and humor.”
Review
“Smith’s watchful, bright…heroines read true. [She] is terrific at creating fresh, evocative, and absolutely right voices in these stories. She can move between the breathless and innocent self-creation of the college student in ‘The Bubba Stories’ to the brittle self-delusion of the professional ‘fiancée’ in ‘The Southern Cross’ with sympathy and understanding.”
Review
“Reading Lee Smith is like coming home again, to find everything as you remembered.”
Review
Praise for SAVING GRACE:
"Evocative...Lyric, poetic and subtly cosmic...her best yet." --San Francisco Chronicle
"Lucid in execution, breathtaking in scope and hear-rending in effect--a redemptive work of art." --The Washington Post Book World
"A Compelling journey into all matters southern and spiritual." --The Boston Sunday Globe
"Smith is peerless at evoking an entire world with a detail or two...The comedy is rich, and the sense of place is intense." --Detroit Free Press
Synopsis
Now back in print from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Girls. It was in 1833 or '34 that Moses Bailey brought young Kate Malone down to Cold Spring Holler to be his wife. But Moses, wanting to become a preacher like his daddy was, left Kate time and again to look after the kids while he went out in search of a sign from God. Though he warned them about the evils of playing the fiddle, a kind of music he likened to the devil's own laughter, it passed the time for his bride and children, and soon became not just a way of life for the Baileys, but a curse that would last for generations.
Synopsis
The New York Times bestselling author of The Last Girls presents one of her most compelling novels, acclaimed by Anne Tyler, Annie Dillard, and more...
Everywhere about her, from the traffic on Highway 460 to the river that's gone black with coal dust, Crystal Spangler sees a current flowing from the mountain town of Black Rock into the wider world. As a teenager, she is elected beauty queen, gets good grades, and-despite her many enviable qualities-manages also to be well-loved. Everyone knows that she is destined to leave town and do great things.
And she does.
But no one expects her return; drawn back home by some sort of memory, as if the current that had taken her away had changed its mind...
Synopsis
New York Times bestselling author Lee Smith offers her signature mix of wit and heartbreak, as well as her “unerring ear for the lyrical and the down and dirty,” (
Atlanta Journal-Constitution) in this superb collection of stories.
Synopsis
Ivy Rowe, Virginia mountain girl, then wife, mother, and finally "Mawmaw," never strays far from her home-but the letters she writes take her across the country and over the ocean. Writing "to hold onto what's passing," she tells stories that are rich with the life of Appalachia in words that are colloquial, often misspelled, but always beautiful.
From childhood, when teachers encouraged her gift for language, to her rebellious teenage years when she swore against motherhood-only to then become a mother-and on through life, Ivy writes with insight, honesty, and a passion for living that is sure to be infectious.
Synopsis
From the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of The Last Girls.
About the Author
Lee Smith is the author of The Last Girls, Oral History, Fair and Tender Ladies, and other novels, and a recent story collection, Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger. She has won the O. Henry Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and the Southern Book Critics Circle Award.