“In the Valley” is a self-contained story that dwells in that time between the book’s end and the epilogue. An epilogue jumps 40 years into the future and recounts what eventually became of them. I thought it might be a book that showed how hard-won (the Great Smoky Mountains National Park) was and also how easily it could be lost.”Īt the end of the novel, Serena and her henchman Galloway depart for Brazil. “Part of the impulse for writing ‘Serena’ in the first place was my fears of what might happen to the national forest. “We’ve got so many things to worry about that we forget about environmental issues, but there are a lot of threats right now nationwide as far as wilderness areas and fisheries are concerned. The same motivation that compelled him to write it prompted him to write “In the Valley,” Rash told me in a telephone conversation last week. “In the Valley” is a compact, devastating return to the place and time of Rash’s most well-known and beloved novel, “Serena.” Published in 2008 and made into a movie starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, “Serena” centers around a logging operation run by a ruthless, ambitious woman in 1929 North Carolina. Sacrifice, revenge, redemption and small acts of humanity play out to heart-wrenching effects in his hands. The conflicts in his narratives are more nuanced than good versus evil. Drugs may be sold and guns may be flashed, but that is not the raison d’être of his complex tales of human failings and triumphs set mostly in the hills of western North Carolina. Rash belongs to the loftier realm of literary fiction. Not to denigrate those reviewers or the genre, I contend that assessment is incorrect. The 66-year-old South Carolina native has written seven novels, six short-story collections, four poetry collections, a children’s book and a new novella called “In the Valley” (Doubleday, $26.95) “In the Valley” by Ron Rash.
Some reviewers lump in New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash, perhaps even suggesting he’s a pioneer of the genre, considering his age and output. Recent entries in the canon include Georgia author Brian Panowich’s “Hard Cash Valley” and “When These Mountains Burn” by David Joy from North Carolina. Crime fiction set in Appalachia has grown so prolific, it has spawned its own genre known as Appalachian noir, or its ruder cousin, hillbilly noir.
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