A local dandy, a known wife-beater, shows up at a parson's door in the middle of winter and demands to be baptized. This is clearest in 'The Blessing,' set before the Civil War.

Rash's South is a Christ-haunted region, but its denizens are definitely fallen and in need of grace. If they don't, however, her neighbors might suspect she's a secret Confederate sympathizer and come after her in a blood feud. The Rebs would normally burn her barn, kill her chickens and loot her larder. A Rebel contingent rides up to a mountain widow's farm, and she face's a Hobson's choice. 'Neighbors' happens late in the Civil War, the period depicted by 'Cold Mountain,' when the Confederate government was fighting its mountain citizens even more ruthlessly than the Yankees. Several of the stories are set in the past. Now comes 'In the Valley,' a collection of nine stories and a novella that's a sort-of sequel to 'Serena.' It makes a fine introduction to Rash's work and his world. writer Randall Kenan’s final book, his imagination flies More: Big changes in store for Wilmington’s Cucalorus fest in 2020 More: Vandals deface little Statue of Liberty in downtown Wilmington (The novel was later made into a movie with Jennifer Lawrence in the title role, but the book is much better.) Rash's best-known book, 'Serena,' a New York Times best seller, dealt with the destruction of mountain forests in the 1920s and '30s by ruthless logging companies. His ridges and valleys are populated by meth cooks, young addicts stealing their parents and grandparents blind, crooked sheriffs who live by their own code and park rangers who'd rather the tourists just went home and left them to what's left of the wilderness. His stories and novels are usually set in North Carolina's Appalachian Mountains, but there's little that's quaint and folksy about them. Ron Rash of Western Carolina University is known as the foremost practitioner of what critics call 'Appalachian noir.'

In the valley by ron rash