A THE RIVER, Adapted from Chapter One of the novel
By Tamara Baxter
Mama says if the rain doesn't stop soon we will all be washed down the Nolichucky River. Our little house that sits upon Stone Shoe Island will come loose from its moorings and float down the river like a houseboat.
No, Mama says. We will float a ways, likely, but not too far, and we will spin like a top in the flood, and then we will sink.
I spin myself around and around and fall dizzy headed on the floor.
Do you know how to swim?
Mama shakes her head. No, son. I don't know how to swim. Read More...
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Rock Big and Sing Loud by Tamara Baxter Just as a fine wine offers a range of flavorful notes for one's palate, so Tamara Baxter's collection of short stories, Rock Big and Sing Loud, strikes a range of emotional notes-all culminating in an extremely satisfying reading experience. Baxter's finely crafted plots and lovingly drawn characters reflect a keen ear for the idiosyncratic speech patterns and expressions of our region and a sharp eye for both the comic and tragic in human behavior. As with all good fiction, the setting of Southern Appalachia does not limit Baxter's themes to this region, but, rather, the characters and their conflicts become a part of the human drama found anywhere when life is examined closely. Gloria Oster |
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Tamara Baxter
Tamara Baxter's collection of fiction, "Rock Big and Sing Loud" won
the Morehead State and Jesse Stuart Foundation's
First Author's Award for Fiction, and was published by the Jesse Stuart
Foundation Press. Her short fiction,
poetry, and essays have been widely published in journals such as
"Artemis," "Appalachian Heritage," "Wellspring,"
and in anthologies such as the 2000 "O. Henry Awards Anthology," and
"The Night Shade Nightstand Reader," edited by Fred Chappell. Baxter
has received more than a dozen awards for her writing. Read More... |
