Review: Beautiful collection of heartfelt tales
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 17, 2014
A lovely, sometimes heart wrenching collection of Appalachian storytelling. The writing is breathtaking, allowing you to hear and see the narrator as they weave a tale of events past. Nowhere Man hits hard on all your senses, from the hickory-smoked sausage aroma that permeated her uncle's home to the pain of a child's broken heart as she tries again and again to connect to a father she's never known. In A Drink of Lonesome Water you're delivered to eastern Kentucky, to a four room home with a coal cook stove and an embarrassingly well ventilated outhouse by the creek bank.Each story is lovingly told, and as I read I picture the storyteller's eyes fading to the side as well worn memories are resurrected. Though their circumstances seem far removed from mine, I felt an immediate connection to their trials and tributes that seem to carry through time and economic status and age. It is, quite simply, a beautiful collection of stories and one I will no doubt read again and again.