In the Valley

From bestselling and award-winning writer Ron Rash ("One of the great American authors at work today."—The New York Times) comes a collection of twelve searing new stories and the return of the villainess who propelled Serena to national acclaim, in a long-awaited novella.Ron Rash has long been a revered presence in the landscape of American letters. A virtuosic novelist, poet, and story writer, he evokes the beauty and brutality of the land, the relentless tension between past and present, and the unquenchable human desire to be a little bit better than circumstances would seem to allow (to paraphrase Faulkner). In these twelve stories, Rash spins a haunting allegory of the times we live in—rampant capitalism, the severing of ties to the natural world in the relentless hunt for profit, the destruction of body and soul with pills meant to mute our pain—and yet within this world he illuminates acts of...