Gap Creek

Julie Harmon is like other strong mountain women created by Harriette Arnow, Lee Smith, and Wilma Dykeman; she survives poverty, flood, and pain by mixing hard work with love. Perhaps because he is a poet, Morgan uses her voice in simple but luminous prose that tells the truth whether about the beauties of Appalachia or the human struggles during childbirth and death throes.

In examining the hard, honest lives of his people, Robert Morgan gives voice to a time and place rarely imagined. Gap Creek speaks of things both intimate and eternal.

A stark beautiful story of a strong young woman prevailing over natural disasters and tragedies, as well as cultural barriers, in the first year of her marriage in the last year of the century.

Gap Creek is the work of a master. Robert Morgan knows every corner, every inch, of the way of life he portrays in this deeply affecting book. He has created one of the most admirable heroines in modern literature; I feel that I'll remember her always. Here is a strength and grace and immeasurable courage: a triumph!