What readers are saying:
"I find myself
laughing out loud, or silenced in awe of the language, and at times the poetry
of the moments just knocks the wind out of me." ~Tree
Trimmer
"Pure poetry." ~Artist
"One of the most
innovative pieces of literature I've read in the past several years. This novel
will evoke profound emotion in all but the most jaded reader."
~Writer
"Many parts were so tingly good they were almost painful.
Over and over, I had to stop reading, put the book down, and catch my breath
before I could go on." ~Retired Eighth-Grade English
Teacher
"Poetry in prose...artistically arranged structure and use of
words...a unique and highly enjoyable read." ~Physician
"'I liked
your book' ain't a patch on it. Thanks for the best reading experience I've had
in years. Please, do it again!" ~Excerpt from a reader's note mailed to the
author shortly after the book's publication (It's been on her fridge ever
since.)
Summary:
Raised deep in the Shawnee Hills amid
hogback bluffs, a roundabout river, and unending family, two divergent sisters
share a colorful journey: first through childhood in a place both blessed and
cursed by the hybrid footprints of the Appalachia and Ozark regions surrounding
it, and then into the wide world beyond, compelled by their shared
wanderlust.
Arkansas (Sass) and Texas MacTerptin weave the tender backroads of youth, protected and exposed by their fertile home-soil in a sunken part of a foothilled fraction of the world where seasons are still sacred as a river, and roads with crooks and creeks in their names are the chosen routes. Catechized Catholic in the midst of Baptist brimstone, backporch fiddle-fire, and backwoods corn-shine, the girls are heavily influenced by the lower-cased catholicity of their spitfire French granny.
When travels land them on the yonder side of fugitive grace, the sisters discover that the sheltered bluffs of their youth are vastly removed from the broad ground beyond. Mapping their way through the wrinkles of exploration and Mystery, they find themselves on a truly foreign journey, separated from familiarity by an ocean. By way of the gravitational tug of home that dwells without end deep in the folds of notion, the sisters realize amid their travels the depth of native soil and its tangle of roots.
From the publisher:
Joanna Beth Tweedy's
combination of both rural homeland and poetic language will surprise and delight
you--as will the stories of two unforgettable sisters and their backwoods clan.