Skip to main content

Ron Rash

Biography

Ron Rash

Ron Rash is the author of the PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling novel SERENA, in addition to the critically acclaimed novels THE RISEN, ABOVE THE WATERFALL, THE COVE, ONE FOOT IN EDEN, SAINTS AT THE RIVER, and THE WORLD MADE STRAIGHT; four collections of poems; and seven collections of stories, among them BURNING BRIGHT, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY, a New York Times bestseller, and CHEMISTRY AND OTHER STORIES, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Three times the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, his books have been translated into 17 languages. He teaches at Western Carolina University.

Ron Rash

Books by Ron Rash

by Ron Rash - Fiction, Historical Fiction

It’s 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. But when his best and only friend, Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob’s wife, Naomi. Sixteen-year-old Naomi Clarke works as a seasonal maid in the town’s most elegant hotel. When Naomi eloped with Jacob a few months after her arrival, the marriage scandalized the community, most of all his wealthy parents who disinherited him. Shunned by the townsfolk for their differences and equally fearful that Jacob may never come home, Blackburn and Naomi grow closer and closer until a shattering development derails numerous lives.

by Ron Rash - Fiction, Short Stories

In these 10 stories, Ron Rash has created a mesmerizing look at the imperfect world around us, from the severing of ties to the natural world in the relentless hunt for profit to the destruction of body and soul with pills meant to mute our pain. "Baptism" was chosen by Roxane Gay for inclusion in THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2018, and "Neighbors" was selected by Jonathan Lethem for THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2019. And in revisiting Serena Pemberton, Rash updates his bestselling parable of greed run amok as his deliciously vindictive heroine returns to the North Carolina wilderness she left scarred and desecrated to make one final effort to kill the child who threatens all she has accomplished.

by Ron Rash - Fiction

While swimming in a secluded creek in 1969, 16-year-old Eugene and his older brother, Bill, meet the entrancing Ligeia. Drawn in by her raw sensuality and rebellious attitude, Eugene falls deeper under her spell. Ligeia introduces him to the thrills and pleasures of the counterculture movement. But just as the movement’s youthful optimism turns dark elsewhere in the country that summer, so does Eugene and Ligeia’s brief romance. When Ligeia vanishes as suddenly as she appeared, the growing rift between the two brothers becomes immutable. Decades later, when a shocking reminder of the past unexpectedly surfaces, Eugene is plunged back into that fateful summer and the girl he cannot forget.

by Ron Rash - Fiction

Les, a long-time sheriff just three weeks from retirement, contends with the ravages of crystal meth and his own duplicity in his small Appalachian town. Becky, a park ranger with a harrowing past, finds solace amid the lyrical beauty of this patch of North Carolina. When an irascible elderly local is accused of poisoning a trout stream, Les and Becky are plunged into deep and dangerous waters, forced to navigate currents of disillusionment and betrayal that will force them to question themselves, test their tentative bond --- and threaten to carry them over the edge.

by Ron Rash - Fiction, Short Stories

SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE showcases Ron Rash’s artistry and craftsmanship in 30 stories culled from his previously published collections NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY, BURNING BRIGHT, CHEMISTRY and THE NIGHT NEW JESUS FELL TO EARTH. Each work of short fiction demonstrates Rash’s dazzling ability to evoke the heart and soul of this land and its people --- men and women inexorably tethered to the geography that defines and shapes them.

by Ron Rash - Fiction, Literary Fiction, Suspense

Vivid, harrowing yet ultimately hopeful, THE WORLD MADE STRAIGHT is Ron Rash’s exploration of the painful conflict between the bonds of home and the desire for independence --- soon to be a major motion picture from Millennium Entertainment, starring Haley Joel Osmont, Minka Kelly and Jeremy Irvine.

by Ron Rash - Fiction, Short Stories

PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash turns again to Appalachia to capture lives haunted by violence and tenderness, hope and fear, in stories that span from the Civil War to the present day. In the title story, two drug-addicted friends return to the farm where they worked as boys to steal their former boss's gruesomely unusual war trophies.

by Ron Rash - Historical Fiction, Love & Romance

Deep in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina lies a dark, forbidding place called the cove and within its shadows lives Laurel Shelton, a lonely young woman who’s believed to be a witch. One day, a stranger appears who explains in a note that his name is Walter and he is a mute. Laurel experiences true companionship and happiness for the first time, but Walter harbors a secret that could destroy everything.

by Ron Rash

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston to the North Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber empire. Together this lord and lady of the woodlands ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of favor. Yet when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, she sets out to murder the son George fathered without her.