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Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay: Stories

Ron Rash

  • awardLonglisted, The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, 2013
  • New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash returns again to Appalachia to capture lives haunted by violence and tenderness, hope and fear in unforgettable stories that span the Civil War to the present day.

    In the title story, two drug addicted friends return to the farm where they worked as boys to steal their boss’s unusual but valuable war trophies. In ‘The Trusty’, Ron Rash’s first story to appear in the New Yorker, a prisoner sent to fetch water for the chain gang tries to sweet talk a farmer’s young wife into helping him escape, only to find she is as trapped as he is. In ‘Something Rich and Strange’, a diver is called upon to pull a drowned girl’s body free from under a falls, but finds her eerily at peace below the surface.

    The violence of Rash’s characters and their raw settings are matched only by their unexpected tenderness and stark beauty, a masterful combination that has earned Rash an avalanche of praise.

    STORIES IN THIS COLLECTION

    I
    The Trusty
    Nothing Gold Can Stay
    Something Rich and Strange
    Cherokee
    Where the Map Ends

    II
    A Servant of History
    Twenty-Six Days
    A Sort of Miracle
    Those Who Are Dead Are Only Now Forgiven

    III
    The Magic Bus
    The Dowry
    The Woman at the Pond
    Night Hawks
    Three A.M. and the Stars Were Out

    Ron Rash
    About the Author

    Ron Rash is a multi-award-winning poet, short story writer and novelist. A PEN/Faulkner finalist for Serena, he is also a recipient of the O.Henry Prize and winner of the 2011 Frank O’Connor Award for Burning Bright, a collection of short stories. His other work includes the novels, One Foot in Eden and The Cove. He teaches at Western Carolina...

    Read Moreright
    Extent:
    256pp
    Format:
    Paperback
    Text publication date:
    27 February 2013
    ISBN:
    9781921922091
    AU Price:
    $29.99
    NZ Price:
    $37.00
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    Praise for Ron Rash
    andNothing Gold Can Stay

    ‘In the end it is not the shocking stories that make this collection so memorable but smaller, more allusive ones such as the deeply impressive The Magic Bus…For in these quieter stories one feels the same compassion that animates Twenty-Six Days, and by extension, the sliver of Chekov.’

    ‘When writers gather and tipple while discussing those not present at the table but admired, the name Ron Rash quickly comes up. Rash throws a big shadow now and it’s only going to get bigger and soon.’ 

    ‘[The stories] display a universality that goes beyond time or place…There is a purity and precision in Rash’s prose reminiscent of his poetry, that makes these stories deceptively easy to read as they are hard to forget. This is memorable and unflinching short fiction.’ 

    ‘Short stories may be to novels as carpentry is to architecture, but all of Rash’s stories are crafted, jointed and dovetailed in quite beautiful, striking ways.  Perhaps good short stories are consistently distinguished by the sort of severe, exacting clarity in which Rash specialises.’ 

    ‘Rash writes in the tradition of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor and more contemporary writers such as Charles Frazier and Cormac McCarthy. His fiction occupies that strange, language-driven netherland between myth and realism. It’s a dark, poetic, blood-soaked world.’ 

    ‘Set during World War I, The Cove is a novel that speaks intimately to today’s politics. Beautifully written, tough, raw, uncompromising, entirely new.  Ron Rash is a writer’s writer who writes for others’  

    The Cove is a marvelous novel, bristling with power, humanity and the exceptional quality of characterization and story-telling we have come to expect from Ron Rash’ 

    ‘‘Ron Rash’s Burning Bright is a volume of spare, finely tuned short stories that take us deep into the soul of the American highlands…this volume of stories consolidates Rash’s reputation as an American master at the height of his powers.’ 

    ‘Powerful, violent and compelling, Serena has the grace of a literary masterpiece, a read to be savoured page after page. The language is cool, clear and compelling; dialogue and atmospherics as sharp as the Appalachian mountain air.’ 

    ‘Get as far as the opening page of Ron Rash’s Serena and you won’t be able to put it down…His writing is beautifully evocative and his sense of place and time captivating…utterly chilling and gripping reading. Ron Rash has a bestseller on his hands.’ 

    ‘Rash is a consummate storyteller…The stories are filled with twists, amusing plays on language and accent, black humour, irony and, of course, beautiful prose.’

    Other editions ofNothing Gold Can Stay
    • Nothing Gold Can Stay
      ebook
      ISBN: 9781922148216
      27 February 2013
      Buy ebook