English 101
Burning Bright
By Ron Rash
Publication info
First published January 1, 2010 in Hardcover, 205 pages.
Rash, Ron. Burning Bright. Ecco, 2010.
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goodreads Ratings & Reviews https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6646042-burning-bright
“New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Ron Rash is "a storyteller of the highest rank" (Jeffrey Lent) and has won comparisons to John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, and Gabriel García Márquez. It is rare that an author can capture the complexities of a place as though it were a person, and rarer still that one can reveal a land as dichotomous and fractious as Appalachia—a muse; a siren; a rugged, brutal landscape of exceptional beauty, promise, and suffering—with the honesty and precision of a photograph. "If you haven't heard of the Southern writer Ron Rash, it is time you should" (The Plain Dealer). In Burning Bright, the stories span the years from the Civil War to the present day, and Rash's historical and modern settings are sewn together in a hauntingly beautiful patchwork of suspense and myth, populated by raw and unforgettable characters mined from the landscape of Appalachia. In "Back of Beyond," a pawnshop owner who profits from the stolen goods of local meth addicts—including his own nephew—comes to the aid of his brother and sister-in-law when they are threatened by their son. The pregnant wife of a Lincoln sympathizer alone in Confederate territory takes revenge to protect her family in "Lincolnites." And in the title story, a woman from a small town marries an outsider; when an unknown arsonist starts fires in the Smoky Mountains, her husband becomes the key suspect. In these stories, Rash brings to light a previously unexplored territory, hidden in plain sight—first a landscape, and then the dark yet lyrical heart and the alluringly melancholy soul of his characters and their home.”
About the Book
The characters:
“The characters in Burning Bright are flawed … but they’re not monsters, even when their actions lack compassion or are downright criminal. The worst you can say about them is ‘They’re trying.’” – Pop Matters
About the Book
The setting
Though the 12 stories in Burning Bright cover a wide swath of time from the Civil War to the present day, collectively they tell a story about Appalachia. And though they take us along the winding roads to the old homesteads and subdivisions of the American South, where “the region is a character in and of itself” and “myths and legends and history permeate every story” (BookPage), they also pulse with universal human emotions.
About the Book
“Highlighting the continuity of the human struggle over the ages,” Rash uses “a focused spotlight to illuminate a wider truth about society and our place within it” (Independent).
About Ron Rash
Ron Rash (b. 1953)
“You go deep enough into a place and you’re going to hit the universal, because you’re hitting what’s true of people.” —Ron Rash in Electric Lit
About Ron Rash: Family
Ron Rash’s ancestors have called the southern Appalachian Mountains home since the mid-1700s. His parents worked in a textile mill in Chester, South Carolina, where Rash was born and lived until the age of eight, when his family moved to Boiling Springs, North Carolina. His father was “a remarkable man,” he said, a “kid who dropped out of high school at 16 to work in the mill, then through incredible perseverance got his GED, went to college while working full-time, and eventually became a college art teacher” (from an interview with Shepherd University).
About Ron Rash: Storytelling
Rash was encouraged to embrace language and stories from a young age. Though his grandfather couldn’t read or write, he was—like many of Rash’s older relatives—an entertaining raconteur. “I grew up hearing an Appalachian dialect that you don’t often hear today” (Authors ‘Round the South). Both of Rash’s parents were voracious readers. His mother took Rash and his siblings to the library every week. But he had a special relationship with his grandmother, who had been a schoolteacher in the North Carolina mountains before she married his grandfather and turned her attention to their farm.
Word Note: raconteur > someone who tells funny or interesting stories.
About Ron Rash: Teaching
Following his studies, Rash worked as an instructor in a rural high school in Oconee County, South Carolina, then for 17 years as a teacher for the Tri-County Technical College in Pendleton, South Carolina. Currently, he holds the Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University, where he teaches poetry and fiction writing. “My years teaching high school and technical college made writing difficult, but I’ve always believed if writing is important enough to a person, he or she will make time. I got up early to write a couple of hours every weekday, wrote weekends and holidays” (Shepherd University).
About Ron Rash: Writing
“I think writing a poem is like being a greyhound,” said Rash when asked how he approaches writing in different genres. “Writing a novel is like being a mule. You go up one long row, then down another, and try not to look up too often to see how far you still have to go. Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I’ve learned about poetry—the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible—but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novel’s length, satisfies the reader” (Daily Beast).
National Endowment for the Arts
Works Cited
"Burning Bright." National Endowment for the Arts, www.arts.gov/initiatives/nea-big-read/burning-bright. Accessed 14 Feb. 2023.
"Burning Bright Ron Rash." Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/book/show/6646042-burning-bright. Accessed 14 Feb. 2023.