Burning Bright By Ron Rash

Will Byrnes

description
Ron Rash - image from Mercer News

Rash’s fourth book of short stories returns us to his Appalachia, covering a wide swath of time, from the Civil War to the present day. Rash has a gift for story-telling and the dozen tales here will do no harm to his sterling reputation. His characters tend to be at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder and their struggles tend toward the existential. A young Union soldier’s wife is threatened by a hostile Confederate. A family’s life is endangered by their meth-addict son. A lonely woman, unable to recover from the long-ago death of her only child, retreats from reality. A child steals food in order to survive. This is a world in which kindness shows an occasional glimmer of light, and, as often as not, is suddenly doused by a sturdier form of darkness. But while the stories here tell of hard lives, Rash’s command of imagery and language is, as usual, stunning, and his tales are a joy to read. Read them several times and find images you missed in the first or second go-round. Like most excellent work, Rash’s stories improve with closer inspection. I am reminded of another of my favorite authors, Thomas Hardy. Hardy, like Rash, was a poet. The skill it takes to conjure much in a little clearly flows well from that taut talent. It is a short book, so rereading will take little effort. The reward in joyful appreciation will repay that investment many times.

My reviews of other Ron Rash books
-----2023 -
The Caretaker
-----2020 -
In the Valley
-----2016 -
The Risen
-----2015 -
Above the Waterfall
-----2013 -
Nothing Gold Can Stay
-----2012 -
The Cove
-----2008 -
Serena

June 6, 2017 - I was alerted by GR friend Linda to the following from April 2017 -
href="
http://www.citizen-times.com/story/ne... Ron Rash wins Guggenheim Fellowship - Rash deserves all the recognition there is, he is a national treasure.

Candi

4.5 stars

“There’s always a price to be paid for anything you get.”

There may be twelve stories in this collection by Ron Rash, but the phrase ‘a dime a dozen’ does not apply here, folks. Each story is unique, skillfully written, and thorough. Rash does not cut short and leave you wanting and wondering. The lush, beautiful backdrop of Appalachia is paired with the sordid, the lawless, and the troubled. Some people are living hardscrabble lives, just trying to get by and put food on the table or support sick loved ones. Others suffer from alcoholism, meth addictions, grief, neglect, and deep-rooted superstitions.

“And what I’m thinking is maybe it’s time to halt all human reproduction. Let God or evolution or whatever put us here in the first place start again from scratch, because this isn’t working.”

You pity these poor souls. Choices are made and it’s difficult to judge these people when Rash brings you to their doorstep and into their homes and their lives. You may not have crossed such thresholds before, but your glimpse of their world is just enough to understand. The very first story in the collection knocked me for a loop and nearly each successive tale left me stunned. These are tense; you know that lives like these can take any turn, often for the worst. You sit with fingers crossed, breath held, and hope that someone will have a happy ending to this wretched life.

“I look out at the human wreckage filling The Last Chance.”

This is the second time I’ve been steeped in the simultaneous beauty and squalor of Rash’s world. I admit, it’s not a place I picture myself deliberately setting out for a visit, yet I’m drawn to it. I don’t think I can stay away. The allure of Rash’s words is too strong to resist. I’ll be going back for more.

More samples of the dazzling prose that I must share with you:

“In the east, darkness lightened to the color of indigo glass. The first outlines of the corn stalks and their leaves were visible now, reaching up from the ground like shabbily dressed arms.”

“It always amazed him that such radiance could grow in soil the sun rarely touched, like finding rubies and sapphires on the gloamy walls of a cave.”

“The scarlet oak’s leaves caught the day’s last light. Lambent, that was the word for it, Boyd thought, like red wine raised to candlelight.”

“ I look up from my yard the moon’s all skinny and looks to be no more than something you might hang a coat on.”

karen

chris wilson owes me some child support.

and it looked bigger on the internet; like an actual baby, i was surprised at just how tiny it was. it is wonderful wonderful, and i have no complaints about my book-son, but i just wish it had about a hundred more stories in it. i read it in a day, despite all efforts to "hold back" a little. but for a tiny book, it rocked my world in a huge way.

my favorite story was "the woman who believed in jaguars", mostly because i think the description of jaguar as "muscled water" is a perfect way of describing rash's writing. he manages to be spectacular and brutal but also fluid and sinuous at the same time. he is sleek without being slick, and he does not retract his claws.

the first story is, yes, probably the best in the collection, writing-wise. it is both the punch in the face and the caress afterward. remorseless situations, just the way i like 'em.

but remorseless is what rash does best; estranged spouses trying to rekindle affection and need through crime, families overlooking cruelties inflicted because of the bond of blood, a girl five years out of high school pawning the last of her possessions to feed a crippling meth addiction, "free bird" played over and over - these are little tableaus of hell, appalachia-style.

rash is amazingly skilled at depicting the harsh realities of people whose lives are perilous but still have moments of great beauty, but make no mistake, these aren't "overcoming life's obstacles and finding the silver lining and everything is all right at the end" stories. dogs will be killed, lies will be told, people will be left bleeding to death in barns, it ain't no chicken soup for the soul, this.they are simply vignettes, starkly, vividly, beautifully told "this-is-how-it-is-here" stories, like it or lump it.

"return" was the only story i didn't really care about - it was too short and lacked dimension to me, it read like the way a Short Story should be written. also, "the ascent" was a little treacly. but every other story was pretty much perfect. it is a short little book that really packs a wallop.

and it is ready for its next feeding.
thank you, chris wilson.
thank you, ron rash...

come to my blog!

Libby

4+ stars - This is a collection of short stories divided into two parts with six stories in each part. Even though author Ron Rash hails from the area in which I’ve spent my entire life (western North Carolina), this is my first time to dip into the voluminous stream of his work. It was refreshing, intriguing, and familiar in the best of ways. Familiar in the sense that I immediately knew the characters, some of them like Jesse in the story, ‘Into the Gorge’ are so familiar that they feel like relatives, like an almost me clone walking over land that has been in my family for at least six generations, a parallel universe. A strange sensation, indeed!

The land around Jesse’s house had been in their family for two hundred years. Like Jesse, I grew up playing in forests that were communal. I thought that my grandfather was wealthy and owned all the surrounding land where my cousins and I romped and explored. In fact, he owned only 14 acres and lived hand to mouth just like most of his neighbors. Like Jesse, I considered the first No Trespassing signs and Posted signs offensive and most likely not meant for me, my grandfather’s oldest grandchild.

Jesse’s family had lived on this land for two hundred years. His great aunt lived all eight decades of her life there and she died there, in the gorge, naked, under a tree. Like Jesse’s family, mine told ghost stories and believed in hauntings. Jesse’s father and aunts sold their land to the park service, but Jesse still remembers the ginseng patch his father seeded. Needing some extra money as a cushion against hard times, Jesse decided to visit the ginseng patch as he had two autumns ago. When he goes down ‘into the gorge’ this time, things go awry.

My other favorite story is ‘Back of Beyond.’ It tells of a son addicted to meth. He’s moved his elderly Mom and Dad out of their old farmhouse and into his trailer and he’s robbed them of everything of value to feed his habit. The story is told from Parson’s point of view. Parson is the boy’s uncle and owner of a pawnshop. Lots of desperate addicts end up at the pawnshop.

I enjoyed all the stories but found ‘The Woman Who Believed in Jaguars’ a mite confusing. In this story, a woman remembers a sketch of a jaguar in a textbook from third grade. She spends a lot of time researching whether jaguars actually ever lived in her home state of South Carolina. Ruth is a nondescript, everyday person. Maybe it’s the jaguar’s distinctiveness, it’s rarity, that she is drawn to. The story puzzles me as the other stories do not. I feel like I’m missing something about this story, that it has a deeper level that escapes me.

The ending of Rash’s stories are simple but perfect, like tiny jewels sparkling at the end of a set-piece. I found my first foray into Rash’s writing very time worthy. His prose is excellent, his characters well executed; his writing steeped in the southern way of life, both past, and present, brewed like dark coffee on a dark night, something to sink into, a place to revisit often.

Brian

Ron Rash takes poverty, holds it before the Reader in clarion brilliance, and states "Watch what I can do with this shit."

Sure, Christ opines You'll always have the poor among you but what difference does it make unless we can be among them? Why meth? Why live in a trailer with windows painted black, scratching out a meaningless existence playing "Freebird" once an hour to equally poor and drunk rednecks? What does it mean to be middle-aged and very unclear about where the next meal is coming from? Forget that paycheck-to-paycheck shit, this is All-Star Poor.

I don't know Rash's back story, but I wouldn't be surprised if he (or a near relative) had to steal eggs from a hen in the dead of night to survive; seriously considered meth as a way to cope with the world; witnessed the waning of a dying love. It doesn't take a good writer to shock a reader - it takes someone of Rash's talents to pin us and make us remember that the human condition comes with a fatal prognosis - and the sooner we realize this the quicker we can get on living. I'm making up a memory I'll soon enough need, the narrator of the story "Falling Star" tells us. That's wisdom beyond the room temperature IQ of Rash's protagonist, it is sage advice to the living.

Sara

This is the best collection of short stories I have ever read. Each one is a mini-novel, fully fleshed out, raw and bruising and intimate. Rash uses the first person in each of the stories, and that sense of listening to a person tell their own story is captivating. It is like sitting across the table from someone and having them say, “I will tell you something that happened to me, and you will wish you didn’t, but you will believe it.”

I have consciously avoided reading Ron Rash over the past four years. I read his novel,
Serena, in 2016 and I disliked it more in retrospect than I even did when I had first finished it. I thought Rash a good writer, but I also thought he would likely not write anything that would have real appeal for me, since I had been assured by more than one person that
Serena was his best, his finest, and his defined style. I had another of his books sitting on my physical bookshelf and I put it, unread, in the giveaways when I moved. I am now wishing I had held on to it and given Rash another try.

Moving away from my mistakes and back to this powerful collection, I must say that Rash views the human condition from the underbelly a lot of the time. His characters are frequently already beaten down by life and social position, or they find themselves in situations that the reader realises are sure to go bad at any moment. There is a kind of tension that permeates the stories, keeping you on the edge of your seat waiting for the axe to fall, and sometimes you become so involved that you feel when it does it will fall on you and not on the fictional person at all.

Rash is also not afraid to draw on his store of literary knowledge and life experience to add reality to his stories. In the story, Free Bird, the Lynyrd Skynyrd song plays a major role and we are treated to a reference to Flem Snopes. These references made the story, and the protagonist, come alive for me. His descriptions of The Last Chance bar and its occupants were so vivid that I felt I had stumbled into the dive joint and could smell the vomit and alcohol.

The range of people and situations is wide here. Not one story mimics or recalls another. They are set in different places and different centuries, but each and every one of them works. And, the final test of a great short story for me, not one of them feels unfinished or truncated. Rash knows exactly when to get out. Taking a hint for that last line, I believe it is time I “got out” as well. Read this!

Diane Barnes

It's rare that all short stories in a collection are great, but that's the case here. Ron Rash knows the people he writes about, knows how they think and how they talk, and he knows and loves the landscape in his corner of Appalachia.

"Dead Confederates" is a contender for my favorite short story of all time, followed closely by "Waiting for the End of the World" and "Lincolnites".

Paul Secor

Some thoughts on Burning Bright:

You can't judge an author by his books (or, in this case, book). The stories in this book are intense, harsh, stark (pick one or all). Yet, when I heard Ron Rash speak and read recently, he was a cordial. engaging, and funny man. Go figure.

In one of the stories, "Waiting for the End of the World", the narrator remarks (of Ronnie Van Zandt), "he did the best he could with what he had."
Mr. Rash said something similar about the characters in his stories when I heard him speak. Thinking about that helped me to accept the characters and their actions and appreciate the stories much more than I might have.

In some of Burning Bright's stories, there are characters who do what they must do, rather than what they want to do or what other people might tell them to do. That's a somewhat foreign concept to someone like myself, and I was introduced to the challenge of encountering a world view very different from my own.

There is humor in the story, "Dead Confederates", though I wouldn't call it a "funny" story. After reading it, I was reminded of Mel Brooks' comment on tragedy and comedy: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”

Mr. Rash said that "Dead Confederates" and "Lincolnites" had their germination in the fact that his ancestors fought on the side of the Union ("the right side", as he put it) during the Civil War, even though they were from North Carolina. I had read that brothers sometimes fought against each other in that war, but these stories were two reminders of that.

There's a saying that comparisons are odious. And Shakespeare wrote jokingly that "comparisons are odorous." I hope I'm not stinking things up by saying that, for me at least, Burning Bright is an Appalachian Dubliners. There are obvious differences and there are similarities, but I found that in both of these books the specific became a portal to the universal.

Teresa

3.5

Years ago I heard Rash read a passage from one of his works at a local literary fest. I remember it as such beautiful writing and have meant to read him since. I finally have.

From the book's beginning, I could tell Rash is one of those rare writers that gets "out of the way" when he's telling his story, he "just" tells it, there's no (visible) man behind the curtain, no overt authorial intrusion. But a few times I was lost as to a character’s motivation; I wanted just a little bit more, the same with disparate elements that didn’t always gel. Despite some elements that felt incomplete, his beginning and ending lines always connected.

JimZ

I read ‘In the Valley’ (2020) a couple of months ago and enjoyed reading the stories. I thought Ron Rash was a good storyteller. I still feel that way after reading this short story collection written 10 years earlier. In the more recent book, there was one article about the opioid epidemic. In this collection there were two stories on methamphetamine addiction, quite sad. There were also a couple of stories about The Civil War. Twelve short stories in all. Following is a list of them and where they were originally published and astute remarks from yours truly. I jot down remarks so I can go to them years later and say, “What is this gibberish? Now I need to read the stories all over again!” 🙃

1. Hard Time—4 stars. [published in Sewanee Review, Volume 115, Number 1, Winter 2007]
2. Back of Beyond—4.5 stars. [published in Tin House, Issue 31, Spring 2007] Meth addiction. Lord…
3. Dead Confederates—4.5 stars. [published in Shenandoah, Vol. 58, Issue 2, Fall 2008]
4. The Ascent—3.5 stars. [published in Tin House, Issue 39, Spring 2009] Another meth story.
5. The Woman Who Believed in Jaguars—2 stars. [published Carolina Quarterly]
6. Burning Bright—5 stars. [published in Ecotone, Volume 4, Numbers 1 & 2, Winter 2008]] Very well-written story. He packed a lot in there in only a few pages. But sad again. Wife suspects her new husband of setting fires (arson) to brush and trees…but she knows he’s a decent man and she’s lonely. When her first husband died, the town folk expected her to play the grieving widow until the day she would die.
II
7. Return—4 stars. [published in Saltgrass] A soldier returns home from the Philippines in World War II after he has killed a man, and he feels bad about it.
8. Into the Gorge—2.5 stars. [published in Southern Review, Autumn 2008] Not sure why the old man pushed a park ranger down a well. I guess because he called the old man old and a fool. So what?
9. Falling Star—2.5 stars. [published in Crossroads]
10. The Corpse Bird—4 stars. [published in South Carolina Review]
11. Waiting for the End of the World—2.5 stars. [published in Oxford American] Sort of weird. About a 40-year-old ex-high school teacher who’s lost his wife and kid I guess because he’s drunk or a loser or both.
12. Lincolnite—3.5 stars. [published in Smoky Mountain Living magazine, July 1, 2008]

Notes:
• Winner of the 2010 Frank O'Connor award (wow, I’d like to win this prize… €25,000)

Reviews:
•
https://socialecologies.wordpress.com...
•
https://bookpage.com/reviews/6368-ron...
•
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/bo...

Connie G

Every one of the twelve short stories in "Burning Bright" is worth reading. Author Ron Rash takes us to the Appalachian mountains in the Carolinas. His stories are about people facing poverty, addiction, desperation, and loneliness. Superstitions and traditions are passed through the generations. There are several stories about meth-addicted characters that are heartbreaking for their families.

Rash also interjects some humor into some of the stories, such as "Dead Confederates," about looting Confederate graves for memorabilia. There are moral shades of gray that make some actions forgivable. The beauty of the rural mountainous area, and strong community ties also come through in these tales. Ron Rash is a very talented writer who shines a light on the Appalachian people he knows so well.

Stories:
Hard Times
Back of Beyond
Dead Confederates
The Ascent
The Woman Who Believed in Jaguars
Burning Bright
Return
Into the Gorge
Falling Star
The Corpse Bird
Waiting for the End of the World
Lincolnites

Sue

This is my first experience reading Rash’s short stories (I have read Above the Waterfall) and it was powerful. His skill in creating images and settings, characters with problems, weaknesses or flaws, and fitting both into the Appalachia of the Civil War years or today is amazing.

There is such sadness hanging over most of these people. They are enveloped by loss: loss of innocence as parents use everything in the house to buy meth at Christmas; loss of security as parents see a son take everything, also for meth; and others who are beaten down and take risks out of fear of the cost of aging and inevitable decline; still others are living difficult lives in an impoverished area where people still hope for more and better.

The prose was beautiful but the amount of sadness was difficult to absorb at times as the “real” world today is so entangled with loss, sadness and questions about the future. I guess we all are now having a bit of what some people live with almost every day of their lives.

I will continue to read more of Rash’s novels, stories and poetry.

Lisa (NY)

[4+] Searing, scorching, burning stories.

Alialiarya

مجموعه داستان راش که نثر و شخصیت‌های ساده‌ای دارد سعی دارد با انتخاب لحظات مختلفی از یک دوره‌ی زمانی بلند و مشکلات آن دوره نگاهی به تاریخ آمریکا بیندازد. تاریخی پر از جنگ غارت خشم فقر و نوستالژی

داستان اول کتاب را بیش از همه دوست داشتم. مردی بعد از گم شدن تخم مرغ‌هایش به سگ خانواده‌ای مشکوک می‌شود. بعد از کشتن سگ بازهم تخم مرغ‌ها غیب می‌شوند. مرد که در خانه‌اش عمیقا تنهاست و فرزندانش بخاطر رفتار زنش فرار کرده‌اند متوجه می‌شود که نه سگ خانواده بلکه فرزند آن‌هاست که بدون اطلاع پدرش دزدی می‌کند. دزدی تخم مرغ. مرد بعد از آزادکردن فرزند و دروغ‌گویی به همسرش(دزد تخم‌مرغ‌ها مار است) پیش از خواب به آدم‌هایی با شرایط بدتر از خودش می‌اندیشد. به خانواده‌های گرفتارتر. او که خود در بدترین وضع است تنها راه آرامشش را در اندیشیدن به شرایط پست‌تر می‌یابد. شاید تنها راه او همین است. و این تنها راه بسیاری در طول تاریخ بوده است. مردمانی دهه‌ها قبل در آمریکا و بسیاری در امروز ایران

نویسنده را نمی‌شناختم و کتاب را با اعتماد به محمدرضا شکاری خریدم. شکاری از جوان‌های خوش سلیقه‌ی ترجمه‌ است که انتخاب‌های بسیار ویژه‌ای دارد

فقط آهنگ فریاد می‌کشم را تمام می‌کنیم، فقط سه چهار نفر دست می‌زنند. خیلی از آدم‌ها این آهنگ یا اصلا خود گری استوارت را نمی‌شناسند. رادیو و شبکه تلویزیونی موسیقی نسبتا آن‌ها را در جهالت فردبرده‌اند و آن‌ها نمی‌توانند چیز اصل را تشخیص بدهند، حتی وقتی آن چیز از ژن خودشان باشدص۱۷۶

Diane S ☔

Spanning time from the Civil War through to the present, divided into two sections these short stories are gritty and real. All the people are going through some type of adversity, while through their own fault or just life's circumstances. Many are trying to recover something they have lost, trying to find a new path or have taken something that do not belong to them.

Rash's rendering of time and place is nothing short of astonishing. The details in these short stories make one feel that they are reading something that could be much longer, they are that complete. My favorite was the story "Back of Beyond" in which a mother refuses to give up on a son that has turned her and her husbands lives upside down, with dangerous results. This ran so true to me because often parents are blind to the foibles of their children, it's not his fault is something said by many. This story really resonated with me. Never can go wrong reading this author, his knowledge of Appalachia and its people is openly displayed in his many works.

Carmel Hanes

My second Rash collection of short stories, and I enjoyed them as much as the first one. He has a knack for taking ordinary people, in sometimes ordinary (or not) circumstances, and creating a precise dive into a new atmosphere where life isn't measured within clean and tidy lines. With straightforward prose, an insight into our most vulnerable buried human parts, and the skill of a surgeon, he lays bare the trials and tribulations that bring people to do the unthinkable. He walks us into those impulsive decisions that serve to alter the course of our lives.

His characters could be the people next door, or across town, or connected as distant family. They could be us. Rash stories make you think, but they also, gently, make you feel. To me, that's the perfect blend.

"Then her mind had wandered into a place she could not follow, taking with it all the people she knew, their names and connections, whether they still lived or whether they'd died. But her body lingered, shed of an inner being, empty as a cicada husk."

Left Coast Justin

Short stories, I've decided, are not my preferred reading material. That said, this collection has plenty to recommend it.

Rash's stories, though localized in western North Carolina, are spread convincingly across a century and a half, spanning the Civil War through current times. Morality, which is something we tend to think of as fixed, is shown here to be quite fluid, with one set of rules governing wartime, another set appropriate to the near-starvation times of the depression, and still another for modern times. Even now, drug addicts are significantly different in their approach to life than I am. None of this is news, but it's convincingly illustrated here.

Most of these stories concern the consequences of these sorts of fluid moral codes bumping up against the more traditional type. Rash excels at quickly bringing you into the protagonists' worlds and setting up the conflicts that, often as not, make bad lives even worse. In most cases, it's hard not to feel sorry for the assorted buffoons, crazies and occasional good-hearted people whose circumstances drive them into very poor decisions.

I'll make an exception for the meth-heads, for whom I can whip up no sympathy at all. The saddest of all these sad stories is The Ascent, in which a young boy is subjected to criminal neglect and, being a child, doesn't realize there's anything wrong. An aside: One thing that really irritates me about drug culture is the use of the word "partying" to describe an act that is among the loneliest and most selfish things people can do. When the word pops up (once) in this book, it feels like a slap in the face.

Today is Thanksgiving, and I'm grateful to Ron Rash for shining a spotlight on these folks. Waiting For the End of the World, named for the Elvis Costello song, was for me the most frictionless of these tales, and describes a character thus:

Watching him operate, it's easy to believe Rodney's simply an updated version of Flem Snopes, the kind of guy whose first successful business venture is showing photos of his naked sister to his junior high peers.

This, I'm sorry to say, is not the bad guy in this story. In Rash's stories, there's always somebody worse.

Thanks to Michelle for the recommendation.

Toby

What I want to say about this collection is that I liked it. The first section more than the last. It seemed to have more atmosphere and emotion, to hold my interest with it's narrative and location. But that doesn't make for a good review.

Rash is most certainly a literary craftsman, forming tiny slice of life stories set in what is repeatedly called Appalachia in the blurb. I've recently read Pollock and Franklin and McCarthy and Woodrell, I think I've got a good idea of what this word means. It means poor. It means uneducated. It's a place filled with horror and misery on a daily basis that the inhabitants deal with mostly without considering that their lives should be better. It's a place being overrun by Floridian holiday makers and second home owners destroying the neighbourly and community ways of the locals. It's a place built on superstition and folklore, that seems to still retain some of the ancient magic in the land and the minds of the natives despite the crack and meth epidemic that robs them of their self respect.

With this collection Ron Rash tackles the land on an almost epic level. Reaching back in to the not so distant past of the American Civil War and stopping off at various points along the way to the present his appreciation for the people, the place and their joint plight is presented with equal parts ennui and desperation. What little joy is left in these parts hardly makes it in to the fiction of Rash and yet his work has a much lighter tone than the necrophilia of certain other Appalachian authors. Whether his stories are populated with real characters or not I cannot know but the sense of realism he creates with his simple haunting prose is enough to make me believe that this is not a place I'd like to visit, even if given the opportunity of a free holiday home by one of those desperate Floridians trying to make some money on their failed investment.

I'll be adding Ron Rash to my list of Southern American authors I'd like to read more from, ideally in the longer form.

Larry Bassett

I read the first story of
Burning Bright and wondered, “Why would I want to read more stories like this?” It was about what abject poverty did to some hillbillies and their children. It was about meanness and pride. I was demoralized. Then I immediately picked up the book again and read the second story.

The second story weren’t much better: a community in the mountains used up by meth.

Recently I read a book
The Life You Can Save that convinced me that the real severe poverty in the world is in Africa and that my charitable contributions should be directed toward that continent. Ron Rash wants me to wonder about that and reconsider. But I have to think that Rash doesn’t really think it is just about a problem that money can solve.

Story after story, he gives me something to think about. But he leaves knowing what to do about it to me. And that wondering about what to do has taken up much of my life so far without much success.

You will learn about old time mountain beliefs and family ways from this author. He has a way with words that I found both mesmerizing and destabilizing and outrageous. I want to read more Ron Rash and I have his novel
Serena sitting on my shelf waiting to be picked up.

Only took a day to read this whole book – its intensity made me quiver some but I didn’t want to stop. The unsettled feelings were teaching me something about life in a world that is vastly different from mine and where money wouldn’t necessarily solve the problems. Five stars for trying to shine a light in a dark place.

Sheldon Compton

Rash is a short story warrior. He will take the top of your head plumb off with some of these. And the others, they'll break your damn heart and quicken your blood. I'm telling you, Rash gets out the broad sword with this collection. My favorite book of his so far.

Gypsy

داستان‌های بخش اولش رو بیشتر دوست داشتم!

سه و نیم.

و دوبار هم خوندم کلش رو.

LA

Ron Rash regularly uses lush, poetic descriptions of clear mountain streams where spotted trout sip mayflies off the surface. He also has a knack for introducing troubled souls who make questionable choices - truly, no character is painted in a single shade of good or bad.

Although the writing here is a 4.5, I just cannot connect strongly enough to short-story characters quickly enough to love them. All his tales are set in the Carolinas, and I honestly tire of the surroundings in a story collection. In his novels, I absolutely adore his descriptions. Too many people and too many tales - always feels like speed-dating.

Jim Angstadt

This book has a collection of short stories set in the general area of North Carolina. Although the stories are mostly set in the current time, each has a strong influence from previous generations, customs, and doing-what's-right, even if it isn't exactly legal. The characters and their actions are just so strongly drawn.

Having recently read "Serena", also by this author, I had a chance to consider the nature of evil. Both books had characters that you could reach out and touch. But the quality of evil was only in Serena; in "Burning Bright" there is often a lack of moral fiber that doesn't rise to evil. Weakness maybe, old ways surely, even murder, but of necessity.

Eh?Eh!

Short story capsules of poverty, choices, epiphany.

Patty

Quoting from a short story collection cannot give even a glimpse into all the tales, let alone the feel of the book. Rash’s collection has a definite feel, one that I am struggling to describe.

The first story is set during the Depression, in Appalachia. The next is also in Appalachia, but contemporary times rather than historical. This pairing is not an accident. The two stories add so much to each other. I had to go back and reread parts of “Hard Times” as soon as I finished “Back of Beyond”. I would love to know if Rash wrote the two stories back to back or if he saw the similarities later. If I taught writing, I would have to talk about how these two stories work together.

The whole collection collectively enriches each other. There are links between a tale where a man is returning home from World War II and another where the main character is a woman living through the Civil War. It is stories like Rash’s that have kept me reading short stories all my life.

I think part of these connections are because Rash himself seems to be rooted in Appalachia himself. He teaches Appalachian studies and appears to be able to see the world through the eyes of that country. Appalachia may be part of the United States, but like other regions it has its own feel.

I do “catalog” my reading here and I have noticed that a number of books that I have read lately all fall into the category community, including this one. Community is a broad category, but for Rash’s short stories, I believe it is one of the links in the book. All of the stories seem to be set in a similar community and I have a feeling that Rash believes that community is important.

I know that feeling of tribe and oneness draws me to books like this one by Rash. I have never read his work before, but I am looking forward to more of his short stories. I recommend this collection to all readers of southern fiction, to those who like to meet new and different people through their reading and to anyone who wonders what community feels like.

Lou

There was some good stories here. I have briefly gone over a few here in this review. The quality of storytelling was good, there was a few that lacked originality and hook. I give it 3.5 stars.

Hard times
Jacob and Edna are farmers they sell corn and cabbage due to the depression they'd re facing hard times they have a hen and a case of missing eggs. Jacob goes out and asked in the local area inquiring if possibly any stray dogs responsible. Money is hard to come by but he will have to think is it worth loosing a life over a few eggs.

Back of beyond
Parson is at trades man he will buy anything for the right price and sells it on in his antiques store, even guns. The sheriff warns him of one gun for sale and the trouble lad that brought it to the shop, Parson needs to avoid any trouble and to get rid of a bad seed. He brother has raised a good for nothing son who's walking all over him in cashing in on his parents welfare and buying up Meth. Parson soon puts a stop to the layabout criminal and gives his brother a helping hand.

Dead confederates
Stealing from the dead medallions and buckles from war is a crime that must stay with the offender. One man finds himself he could use some money to help pay or his ma hospital treatment so joins another who is doing it and selling them for good money.
They soon get stuck.
"That thought bothers me some, but it’s a lot easier to have a conscience about something if you figure it all the way right or all the way wrong. Doing what we’re doing is a sin for sure, but not taking care of the woman who birthed and raised you is a worse one. That’s what I tell myself anyway."

The Ascent
A family that's hard up and can't afford christmas tree or gifts gets lucky. There son stumbles upon jewellery of value but he also must repay the source.

Laura

These magnificent short stories center around tough choices in limited circumstances. Rash once again captures the voice of the Appalachians in stunning prose.

The first two stories (Hard Times, The Back of Beyond)alone and in juxtapostion are worthy of discussion. Two men taking different approaches to "ridding the snake from the henhouse"; the first of which turns out to be a harmless young girl, the second a meth-addicted nephew who is selling aff the farm a little at a time until his elderly parents move out of the house and into their son's unheated trailer in fear of him and his drugged out friends.

In Dead Confederates and Ascent we see a grwon man and a young boy making similar self-justifications for stealing. And in The Woman who Believed In Jaguars we find a woman grappling to hold on to a lost reality by trying to prove the existance of another.

There is desolation in these sotries, loneliness, and tenderness, too, little fires flaring in the night, moments when men step wrong and there is no turning back, a thin connecting thread of hopes dreamed and hopes dashed.

Albert

So I had just finished a read that was painful and went on forever. I needed something to get me back in balance. A book of short stories would be the thing. Something that I knew would be good. I grabbed Burning Bright by Ron Rash. I had never read anything by Ron Rash before but I had read enough about his ability to write a good short story that I was confident it would be the answer I needed. I read it in three days. Could have read it in one. It was depressing. It was sad. It was more sad. And I loved almost every bit of it. A few of the stories seemed to have a message that felt a bit too much like a sledgehammer upside the head, but otherwise the stories were simply where I wanted to be. The writing was simple. The characters were brilliantly drawn. Falling Star and Waiting for the End of the World were two of my favorites, but there were others. I find myself fully recovered. Ready to read another day.

Kevin

A lot of the 2 & 3 star reviews here are mainly down to the dark subject matter, and generally depressing air that these stories carry. Neither of these things bothered me; if it's dark and depressing you want Daniel Woodrell can out-dark Rash with his eyes closed, and I four-starred his Outlaw Album stories just recently. No, the problem here is that these stories although well written and easily read, lacked a certain edginess, a quirkiness, a bit of madness. If he was going for dark, for my tastes, they needed to be a bit more twisted. I guess I don't know what they lacked, but I wasn't gripped like I hoped I would be.
Hard Times, and Dead Confederates, were personal favourites, but one or two of the others like The Woman Who Believed In Jaguars, and The Return,felt like pointless filler.
Solid, yet too many stories ultimately unmemorable, hence 3 stars.

Title	:	Burning Bright
Author	:	Ron Rash
Rating	:
ISBN	:	0061804118
ISBN-10	:	9780061804113
Language	:	English
Format Type	:	Hardcover
Number of Pages	:	205
Publication	:	First published January 1, 2010
Awards	:	Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award (2010)

Burning Bright Reviews

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