Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

Nine-year-old Jess Hall is caught between two worlds, those of childhood wonder and adult responsibility. Growing up in a small, rural town in the foothills of western North Carolina he and his older brother, Christopher, play in the streams and woods, getting up to the sort of mischief you’d expect of typical young country boys.

Except Christopher isn’t typical. He’s autistic, and his total lack of verbal communication has led to him being given the nickname Stump. Despite Jess being the younger brother, he’s fiercely protective of Stump and feels it’s his responsibility to make sure Stump’s path through life is as smooth as possible.

When things go horribly wrong during an attempted “healing” of Stump by Pastor Carson Chambiliss at the local evangelical church, life changes irrevocably for both boys and nothing about their small town will ever be the same again.

The events of Wiley Cash’s spectacular debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, are relayed through the perspectives of three different narrators, Jess being one of them. Weaving back and forth in time, Cash also adds the world–weary voices of longtime Sheriff Clem Barefield and town/church elder Adelaide Lyle to help flesh out his Southern Gothic tale of religion gone wrong and the destructive power of secrets. (more…)

First, thank you for taking the time to do this interview. I imagine you’re stretched pretty thin with the book about to launch. It’s a question I’m sure you’re going to get sick of answering, but since this is your debut could you give people a little background about yourself? You know, the standard “How did you come to be a writer?” question.

I started out writing doomy, self-centered, “no one understands me” poetry when I was in junior high school. I’ve talked to a lot of writers who started out this way; you listen to a couple of albums by The Doors and suddenly you understand the secrets of the literary universe. I, unfortunately, was sadly mistaken in my understanding of those secrets. I went to college and majored in creative writing so I could work on my poetry, but as soon as I got to college I realized that I was a terrible poet. I still enjoyed writing, so I decided to try my hand at fiction. I wrote my first short story during my sophomore year, and it was actually published. I thought, Man, this writing thing is a piece of cake! I was wrong. I didn’t have another story published for almost ten years, but I kept writing and I kept trying to improve. (more…)