River Of Earth - Softcover

Still, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813113725 ISBN 13: 9780813113722

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky, 1978

Synopsis

First published in 1940, James Still's masterful novel has become a classic. It is the story, seen through the eyes of a boy, of three years in the life of his family and their kin. He sees his parents pulled between the meager farm with its sense of independence and the mining camp with its uncertain promise of material prosperity. In his world privation, violence, and death are part of everyday life, accepted and endured. Yet it is a world of dignity, love, and humor, of natural beauty which Still evokes in sharp, poetic images. No writer has caught more effectively the vividness of mountain speech or shown more honestly the trials and joys of mountain life.

About this title

From the Publisher:

"As you read you can hear the redbirds in the plum thickets and smell the pawpaws at first frost; you know, too, what it means to scrape the bottom of the meat box with a plow blade, hunting for a rind of pork amid the salt when the mines are closed."-Washington Post

"James Still tells of [his people's] japes and sorrows and near starvation, the rich archaic poetry of their talk and customs, in a clear, dry style as unsentimental as his seven-year-old's eyes...he has produced a work of art."-TIME

From the Back Cover:

It is the story, seen through the eyes of a small boy, of three years in the life of his family and their kin. He sees his parents pulled between the meager farm with its uncertain promise of material prosperity. In the world privation, violence, and death, are part of everyday life, accepted and endured.

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
• Publication date: 1978
• ISBN 10: 0813113725
• ISBN 13: 9780813113722
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256