Download or read book Miss America Kissed Caleb written by Billy C. Clark and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mountain is a lonely place. Welcome to Sourwood, a small Kentucky town inhabited by men and women unique and yet eerily familiar. Among its joyful and tragic citizens we meet the crafty, spirited Caleb and his curious younger brother; Pearl, a suspected witch, and her sheltered daughter, Thanie; superstitious Eli; and the doomed orphan Girty. In Sourwood, the mountain is both a keeper of secrets and an imposing, isolating presence, shaping the lives of all who live in its shadow. Strong in both the voice and sensibilities of Appalachia, the stories in Miss America Kissed Caleb are at turns heartbreaking and hilarious. In the title story, young Caleb turns over his hard-earned dime to the war effort when he receives a coaxing kiss from Miss America, who sweeps into Sourwood by train, "pretty as a night moth." Caleb and his brother share in the thrills and uncertainties of growing up, making an accidental visit to a brothel in "Fourth of July" and taming a "high society" pooch in "The Jimson Dog." These stories invoke a place and a time that have long passed—a way of living nearly extinct—yet the beauty of the language and the truth revealed in the characters' everyday lives continue to resonate with modern readers.
Download or read book Miss America Kissed Caleb written by Billy Curtis Clark and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Man Who Loved Birds written by Fenton Johnson and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2016-03-04 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having taken great risks—to immigrate to America, to take monastic vows—Bengali physician Meena Chatterjee and Brother Flavian are each seeking safety and security when they encounter Johnny Faye, a Vietnam vet, free spirit, and expert marijuana farmer. Amid the fields and forests of a Trappist monastery, Johnny Faye patiently cultivates Meena's and Flavian's capacity for faith, transforming all they thought they knew about duty and desire. In turn they offer him an experience of civilization other than war and chaos. But Johnny Faye's law-breaking sets him against a district attorney for whom the law is a tool for ambition rather than justice. Their confrontation leads to a harrowing reckoning that ensnares Dr. Chatterjee and Brother Flavian, who must make a life-or-death choice between an act of justice that may precipitate their ruin or a betrayal that offers salvation. Inspired by the real-life state police kidnapping and murder of a legendary storyteller and petty criminal, The Man Who Loved Birds engages pressing contemporary issues through a timeless narrative of ill-fated romance. Celebrated author Fenton Johnson has woven a seamless, haunting fable exploring the eternal conflicts between free will and destiny, politics and nature, the power of law and the power of love.
Download or read book Of Woods and Waters written by Ron Ellis and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the moment Daniel Boone first "gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and...beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tracts below," generations of Kentuckians have developed rich and enduring relationships with the land that surrounds them. Of Woods & Waters: A Kentucky Outdoors Reader is filled with loving tributes, written across the Commonwealth's two centuries, offered in celebration of Kentucky's widely varied environmental wonders that nurture both life and art. Ron Ellis, an outdoors enthusiast and noted writer, has gathered art, fiction, personal essays and poetry from many of Kentucky's best-known authors for this comprehensive collection. The anthology begins with famed illustrator John James Audubon's eloquent account of extracting catfish from the Ohio River and progresses through over fifty contributions by both established and emerging writers. Covering two hundred years of hunting, fishing, camping, cooking, hiking, and canoeing in Kentucky's woods and waters, these classic and original works show how writers have, as celebrated Kentucky historian Thomas D. Clark suggests, "fallen under the spell of the land." Of Woods & Waters does not merely recount fond memories. Many authors presented in this collection echo the sentiments of the award-winning novelist and essayist Barbara Kingsolver, who writes, "Much of what I know about life, and almost everything I believe about the way I want to live, was formed in those woods" adjacent to her birthplace in Nicholas County, Kentucky. The works collected in Of Woods & Waters serve to honor and defend what many recognize as a sadly declining way of life, one born out of genuine reverence for the beauty and bounty of nature. The contributions of Wendell Berry, Janice Holt Giles, Bobbie Ann Mason, Jesse Stuart, James Still, Robert Penn Warren, James Baker Hall, Silas House, and other esteemed authors examine the delicate balances that must be struck between humanity and nature, between progress and sustainable living. While raising these crucial questions, these writings center on connections among friends and family in Kentucky's beautiful natural surroundings. The authors spin tales of the whistling wings of ducks overhead, the heart-pounding excitement of a white-tailed buck's sudden appearance, the joy of childhood plunges into cold lake waters after hours of climbing trees, and the thrill of watching sons and daughters catch their first fish. In these writings, the bountiful Kentucky wilderness that first captivated frontier settlers remains vibrantly alive.
Download or read book Next Door to the Dead written by Kathleen Driskell and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-08-14 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A collection of poems that are bold, inviting, charming, different, humorous, and irreverent. Often, they slip the bonds of common expectation.” —Northern Kentucky Tribune When Kathleen Driskell tells her husband that she’s gone to visit the neighbors, she means something different than most. The noted poet—whose last book, Seed Across Snow, was twice listed as a national bestseller by the Poetry Foundation—lives in an old country church just outside Louisville, Kentucky. Next door is an old graveyard that she was told had fallen out of use. In this marvelous new collection, this turns out not to be the case as the poet’s fascination with the “neighbors” brings the burial ground back to life. Driskell frequently strolls the cemetery grounds, imagining the lives and loves of those buried beside her property. These “neighbors,” with burial dates as early as 1848, inspire poems that weave stories, real and imagined, from the epitaphs and unmarked graves. Shifting between perspectives, she embraces and inhabits the voices of those laid to rest while also describing the grounds, the man who mows around the markers, and even the flocks of black birds that hover above before settling amongst the gravestones. Next Door to the Dead transcends time and place, linking the often disconnected worlds of the living and the deceased. Just as examining the tombstones forces the author to look more closely at her own life, Driskell’s poems and their muses compel us to examine our own mortality, as well as how we impact the finite lives of those around us. “Driskell has written her path to the Kentuckian sublime.” —Shane McCrae, author of Sometimes I Never Suffered
Download or read book Upheaval written by Chris Holbrook and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2009-09-11 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author of Hell and Ohio shares a story collection set in Eastern Kentucky “so visceral that you can almost feel the grit of coal dust” (Booklist). Chris Holbrook burst onto the southern literary scene with Hell and Ohio: Stories of Southern Appalachia, stories that Robert Morgan described as “elegies for land and lives disappearing under mudslides from strip mines and new trailer parks and highways.” Now, with the publication of Upheaval, Holbrook more than answers the promise of that auspicious debut. In eight interrelated stories set in Eastern Kentucky, Chris Holbrook captures a region and its people as they struggle in the face of poverty, isolation, change, and the devastation of land at the hands of the coal and timber industries. With a native’s ear for dialect and a gritty realism reminiscent of Larry Brown and Cormac McCarthy, the stories in Upheaval prove that Holbrook is not only a faithful chronicler and champion of Appalachia’s working poor but also one of the most gifted writers of his generation.
Download or read book Appalachian Elegy written by bell hooks and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-09-28 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author, activist, feminist, teacher, and artist bell hooks is celebrated as one of the nation's leading intellectuals. Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, hooks drew her unique pseudonym from the name of her grandmother, an intelligent and strong-willed African American woman who inspired her to stand up against a dominating and repressive society. Her poetry, novels, memoirs, and children's books reflect her Appalachian upbringing and feature her struggles with racially integrated schools and unwelcome authority figures. One of Utne Reader's "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life," hooks has won wide acclaim from critics and readers alike. In Appalachian Elegy, bell hooks continues her work as an imagist of life's harsh realities in a collection of poems inspired by her childhood in the isolated hills and hidden hollows of Kentucky. At once meditative, confessional, and political, this poignant volume draws the reader deep into the experience of living in Appalachia. Touching on such topics as the marginalization of its people and the environmental degradation it has suffered over the years, hooks's poetry quietly elegizes the slow loss of an identity while also celebrating that which is constant, firmly rooted in a place that is no longer whole.
Download or read book Scissors Paper Rock written by Fenton Johnson and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Along with his siblings, Raphael Hardin left his childhood home in rural Kentucky. Grappling with an AIDS diagnosis, he returns to care for his dying father. Told from the perspectives of Raphael, his family, and their lifelong neighbor, Fenton Johnson's landmark novel reveals the blood struggles and binding loves of a broken family made whole.
Download or read book The Cave written by Robert Penn Warren and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2006-02-24 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his sixth novel, The Cave (1959), Robert Penn Warren tells the story of a young man trapped in a cave in fictional Johntown, Tennessee. His predicament becomes the center of national attention as television cameras, promoters, and newscasters converge on the small town to exploit the rescue attempts and the thousands of spectators gathered at the mouth of the cave.
Download or read book Crossing the River written by Fenton Johnson and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spirited Southern woman upends the insular world of her small Kentucky town in this acclaimed debut novel by “a storyteller of distinction” (Publishers Weekly). Kentucky, 1944. Though she hails from a Fundamentalist Baptist family, there is nothing conventional about Martha Bragg Pickett Miracle. In her youth, she smoked cigarettes, rode motorcycles, and snuck across the Knob Fork River to buy beer from Catholics—and fall in love with one. Twenty years later, Martha has settled into marriage. But deep down, she’s just as rebellious as she ever was. The arrival of a smooth-talking Yankee contractor leads Martha to turn her life upside down—unaware that her son will follow suit. Both heartfelt and shrewdly humorous, this widely acclaimed first novel from author Fenton Johnson is an affecting look at one woman's reawakening and her son's coming of age in the American heartland.
Download or read book When Winter Come written by Frank X. Walker and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2008-02-01 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sequel to the award-winning Buffalo Dance offers a dramatic and poetic reimagining of the Lewis and Clark expedition into the unexplored wilderness of the American West in a series of poems that share the narrator York's perspectives on the members of the party and the people and places they encounter along the way. Simultaneous.
Download or read book Nothing Like an Ocean written by Jim Tomlinson and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2009-03-06 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jim Tomlinson's previous book of short stories, Things Kept, Things Left Behind, won the prestigious Iowa Short Fiction Award and received enthusiastic reviews. The New York Times compared the strong sense of place in Tomlinson's writing to that found in the works of Flannery O'Connor and Alice Munro. The stories in his new collection, Nothing Like An Ocean, also reflect Tomlinson's awareness of place, revisiting the fictional town of Spivey, a community in rural Appalachia where the characters confront difficult circumstances and, with quiet dignity, try to do what is right. In the title story, Tomlinson explores themes of forgiveness and acceptance in the lives of two characters, Alton Wood, a high school math teacher isolated by grief, and his sister Fran, who is emotionally paralyzed by her part in a tragic death. The two take halting steps back into the world after Alton receives an anonymous invitation to a church singles dance. These themes also underlie "Angel, His Rabbit, and Kyle McKell," which tells of Dempsie's evening with two men -- her volatile boyfriend and the recently returned Iraq War amputee whose secret she has been keeping. Loss and the inevitability of change recur in Tomlinson's stories. In "Overburden," Ben, a man simultaneously contemplating AARP membership and impending fatherhood, travels with his wife, Sarah, back to eastern Kentucky to visit the oak tree that was essential to their courtship, only to find the site as barren and featureless as the moon, a casualty of mountaintop removal mining. "So Exotic" draws us into the worn environs of Rita's Huddle In Café, where the owner becomes the confidant of Quilla, a mousy bank teller who blossoms as the muse of an eccentric artist from Belarus. The eleven stories in Nothing Like An Ocean evoke a strong sense of small-town Kentucky life, finding humor in the residents' foibles while never diminishing their inner lives. Tomlinson's masterful fiction captures light and dark moments, moments that are foreign yet deeply familiar, as his characters seek redemption and sometimes find unexpected grace..
Download or read book New Covenant Bound written by Tony Crunk and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-07-21 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Our only sin was not having what they thought was enough. And being forced to take what they called help." Pain and anger resonate deeply in the voice of New Covenant Bound's central narrator. Forced from her homeland on the Tennessee River in the 1930s, she recounts the memory of upheaval and destruction caused by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The Western Kentucky area that now boasts beautiful, expansive bodies of water was once home to some 20,000 people, their houses, farms, townships and ancestral history. Residents were subjected to three waves of forced relocation to make way for Kentucky Lake in the 1930s, Lake Barkley in the 1950s, and Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area in the 1960s. Renowned poet T. Crunk intersperses narrative prose and vivid lyric verse to explore the devastation one family experienced in this often overlooked episode in Kentucky history. The voices of a grandmother and grandson speak to each other over time, evoking the relentless advance of irrevocable forces that changed the land, forever.
Download or read book At The Breakers written by Mary Ann Taylor-Hall and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2009-03-06 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In At The Breakers, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall presents Jo Sinclair, a longtime single mother of four children. Fleeing an abusive relationship after a shocking attack, Jo finds herself in Sea Cove, New Jersey, in front of The Breakers, a salty old hotel in the process of renovation. Impulsively, she negotiates for a job painting the guest rooms and settles in with her youngest child, thirteen-year-old Nick. As each room is transformed under brush and roller, Jo finds a way to renovate herself, reclaiming a promising life derailed by pregnancy and a forced marriage at age fourteen. At The Breakers is a deeply felt and beautifully written novel about forgiveness and reconciliation. Jo Sinclair, put through the fire, emerges with a chance at a full, rich life for herself and her children, if only she has the faith to take it.
Download or read book Kentucky Libraries written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Journal of Appalachian Studies written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Book Publishing Record written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 932 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
