Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 25

BOOK NOTE
Ron Rash. The Caretaker.
Doubleday, 2023. 252pp.
on Rash's first novel in 10
years is one you'll think
about for a long time, for all
the reasons you remember a
fine book. Its people are real,
flawed, rooted in a time and
place well-told. They're people
who want what most of us want:
to be happy, to be loved, to do
good work in a place that holds
them close.
The novel opens with a young
soldier, Jacob Hampton, doing
guard duty on a
frozen river in North
Korea. He's thinking
about his 17-yearold
pregnant wife,
Naomi, in Blowing
Rock, North Carolina,
where his well-to-do
family has disowned
him for marrying her.
Jacob has left his best friend
and blood brother, Blackburn
Gant, to take care of Naomi.
And though the opening chapter
has a cliffhanger outcome for
Jacob, it's Blackburn you'll follow
through the novel with compassion
and hope. Left facially deformed
by a hard case of polio
as a child, Blackburn accepted
the job of cemetery caretaker at
16, living alone in the cemetery
cottage. And when Jacob's
mother devises a Machiavellian
plot to destroy Jacob and
Naomi's marriage, Blackburn is
pulled in deep as his attraction
to Naomi grows.
No one writes about Appalachia
more truly than Ron Rash,
whose family goes back to the
mid-1700s in western North Carolina.
He knows the flowers and
trees and the intricate music of
the language. Reading Ron Rash
out loud is like singing a Childe
ballad, and always, you'll learn
what it means to be human in
the place called Appalachia.
-JOAN VANNORSDALL
50+ AFFILIATE VENUES
9 major venues
THE MUSICAL
EXPERIENCE OF A
LIFETIME
R
330 Miles
JULY/AUGUST 2024 25

http://thecrookedroadva.com

Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024

Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover1
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover2
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 3
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 4
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 5
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover3
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover4
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