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BookBrowse - Pam Watts
In this beautifully written collection of short stories, Ron Rash digs deep into the lives of people in the North Carolina Appalachian region to create a gritty and at times chilling portrait of those on the down and out. Together the stories create an image of place so vivid that it makes me forget I have spent almost every summer of my life there and makes me believe that Rash's portrait of the region is the one and only... I recommend this collection to any connoisseur of short stories or regional writing, to anyone who likes the eerie or macabre. It's a good book; just keep in mind that Rash's isn't the only Appalachia.
The Washington Post
If they sometimes seem too atmospheric to have real weight, [these stories] nonetheless evoke a subculture and history that stretch from the present day back to the end of the Civil War... Rash gets deep inside the peculiar psychology and emotional idiosyncrasies of the denizens of the mountain South in all their pride, superstition and propensity for sudden violence. Come to think of it, these days those qualities hardly seem exclusive to Appalachia. But then, that is a story in its own right.
Vogue
The ferally beautiful stories in Ron Rash’s Burning Bright evoke Appalachians of a Civil War past-- and a meth-blighted present-- with the haunting clarity of Walker Evans photographs.
Miami Herald
[A] memorable, if often brutal, elegy for a vanishing way of life.
Publishers Weekly
With a mastery of dialogue, Rash has written a tribute and a pre-emptive eulogy for the hardworking, straight-talking farmers of the Appalachian Mountains.
Library Journal
Rash, who has authored not only fiction but also three volumes of poetry, is a master craftsman who pares down language to its essential elements in these starkly beautiful stories.
Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. A nicely varied feast from a master of the form.
Booklist
Display[s] a universality that goes beyond time or place...There is a purity and precision in Rash’s prose...that makes these stories as deceptively easy to read as they are hard to forget. This is memorable, unflinching short fiction by a master of the form.