Burning Bright

Dang, Ron Rash can write! These hard scrabble stories are filled with people facing hardships and bad vs. worse choices in a land not filled with plenty, but American as all get out.

Short stories are difficult, in my opinion. The author must economize, must build suspense and weave tapestries in a handful of pages, leaving you with an incomplete arc that somehow leaves your belly full. At around 200 pages, this collection does just that.

One hallmark of a great writer is an ear for how people speak, and Mr. Rash does an excellent job of that. For ten years, I lived about an hour from Asheville in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the pages of “Burning Bright” contained voices I've heard.

All of the stories are worth a gander, but my favorites are “Hard Times” (a real doozy), “The Corpse Bird” (I found superstition far more rampant in the South than in Yankeekland), “Lincolnites,” and the superlative “The Woman Who Believed in Jaguars.” I hate to say too much about each one because you ought to just read it.