Ron Rash

Oct 23, 2023 | gardenandgun.com | Ron Rash |Gabriela Gomez-Misserian

DispatchesThe graveyard perched over the Rash North Carolina farm has long whispered to the writer—he just needed to listen It is a scene that would feel hopelessly contrived in a novel: A church cemetery borders a family farm, and only a barbed wire fence separates the two. During a bad storm, the wind blows a wreath off a grave and into the cow pasture. A grandmother sends a child, who one day will become a writer, to place the wreath back on the proper side.

Oct 13, 2023 | starnewsonline.com | Ron Rash

Ben SteelmanStarNews correspondentNorth Carolina writer Ron Rash's latest novel, "The Caretaker," is set mostly in 1951 and mostly in and around Blowing Rock. But it reads like a mountain ballad, centuries old, passed down from the misty isles. Like fellow mountaineer Charles Frazier, Rash ("Serena," "The Cove," 'Above the Waterfall") was a poet before he started writing novels, and his prose has the craft of fine-tuned lyrics.

Oct 6, 2023 | deepsouthmag.com | Ron Rash |Kim Foote |Susan Beckham Zurenda

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. The inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob’s wife, Naomi, as well.

Oct 5, 2023 | boisestatepublicradio.org | Ron Rash

Host Robin Young speaks with North Carolina author Ron Rash about “The Caretaker,” his first book in a decade. The novel centers around a young man serving as the caretaker for both the local cemetery and the wife of his best friend who’s been drafted into the Korean War. Ron Rash is the author of “The Caretaker.” (Maryan Harrington) Book excerpt: ‘The Caretaker’ By Ron Rash Jacob was on guard duty, posted beside a river that separated the two armies.

Oct 5, 2023 | salvationsouth.com | Ron Rash

EDITOR’S NOTE: One day after The Caretaker hit bookstores last week, its author, Ron Rash, turned seventy. For twenty-nine of those years—since the publication of his first collection of short stories, The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth: And Other Stories from Cliffside, North Carolina—Rash has been the defining figure of Appalachian literature.