The creative story shapers of this volume reveal a dynamic Appalachia--people who refuse to follow a fixed pattern or fade into a gray-grained background. The loose parts of creation are held up for our curiosity or dismay. Natural and home territories burgeon with wild growth, and public venues carry unusual nuances, leaving no room for cliché or homogeneity. Most memorable, perhaps, are the expressive personae rising from these pages to enchant, startle, warn, mesmerize, amuse, and inspire. Children, elders, and all folks in-between reflect the evidence of spirits being broken and healed. They survive inside a transformative whirl of rituals, habits, and systemic practices, touched by loneliness, temptation, trauma, amazement, fear, resistance, love, faith. They are wonders. Of course, these pages contain a cryptid or two--and supernatural tensions brew in the margins, where the mysteries of astral planes and bones and death also linger. Appalachian strangeness, it seems, ranges all over the regional map. To carry its stories, we must be still, pausing in our workaday lives to listen, watch, learn."--Sherry Cook StanforthMiscellaneous. Poetry. Fiction. Essay.