Out of the Mountains — 2010 · Subscribe to new reviews feed (orange icon)

Appalachian Stories

By Meredith Sue Willis

“(Willis’s) characters possess a conversational familiarity, and the reader feels absorbed into the small community that is both distinctly Appalachian and markedly universal. This finely crafted collection is worth reading twice to discover all its intricacies and connections.”

Booklist

Meredith Sue Willis writes sparkling, masterful stories, grounded in the wisdom of place, musical in their voices and cadences, and truly joyful in their understanding of the power of words. Reader, enter in!”

Jayne Anne Phillips

“In Out of the Mountains, Meredith Sue Willis gives her characters the juice of life. Some turn up in more than one story, prompting the pleasure of recognition. Willis writes about people from Appalachia’s West Virginia corner, where she herself comes from, and about people from New York, where she lives now, with a smattering of folks from elsewhere. They’re all alive on the page. . . . Grade: A-”

CityBeat (Cincinnati)

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Meredith Sue Willis’s Out of the Mountains is a collection of thirteen short stories set in contemporary Appalachia. Firmly grounded in place, the stories voyage out into the conflicting cultural identities that native Appalachians experience as they balance mainstream and mountain identities.

Willis’s stories explore the complex negotiations between longtime natives of the region and its newcomers and the rifts that develop within families over current issues such as mountaintop removal and homophobia. Always, however, the situations depicted in these stories are explored in the service of a deeper understanding of the people involved, and of the place. This is not the mythic version of Appalachia, but the Appalachia of the twenty-first century.


Meredith Sue Willis is the author of more than fifteen books, including novels for adults and children, collections of short stories, and nonfiction about the art of writing, most recently Ten Strategies to Write Your Novel. She teaches novel writing at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
www.meredithsuewillis.com

Cover of Out of the Mountains

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176 pages • 6 × 9 in. • Hardcover: 978-0-8214-1919-9 • Paperback: 978-0-8214-1920-5

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