them. In this assured and evocative debut novel set in rural Kentucky, author C. E. Morgan comes closer to conveying the essence of life, as she sees it, than do most other novelists with generations' more experience. Here Morgan recreates the bare bones lives of subsistence farmers who are irrevocably tied to the land, a land which is sometimes fickle in its ability to sustain those who so lovingly tend it. Orren Fenton is just out of college when he inherits the family's tobacco farm upon the deaths of his mother and brother. Three weeks after the funerals, Orren asks Aloma, his young lover, to come back to the farm with him. Aloma, an orphan from the age of three, is a pianist at the school she attended, and she sees this as her chance to begin a whole new life--a real life of her own. Aloma and Orren are very young, and the work of running the farm is brutal. Orren cannot afford the time to teach the inexperienced Aloma what she needs to know to help him, and Aloma is left to try to strip the floors, wash the walls, and try to make the old family home inhabitable. The piano there is unusable. Before long, these two inexperienced young people are at each other's throats. Aloma feels abandoned all day, while Orren feels that she does not appreciate his work. His suggestion that she practice the piano at a church in town leads to her meeting with