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Fletcher Agency
Melissa Chinchillo
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English
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IF THE CREEK DON'T RISE

Leah Weiss

A bewitching and heart-wrenching story of incredible resilience in the heart of the isolated, forgotten Appalachian Mountains.
Baines Creek is a cloistered world of hooch stills, ginseng hunting, and coal mining, perched atop a steep, foggy mountain deep in the North Carolina highlands. The sad story of Sadie Blue feels all too familiar in this small town: a drunk daddy, a mama who left to find better, a bitter granny haunted by her own demons, and a bright young girl who falls for a dangerous man, implicated when a girl from the next town over goes missing.

An unexpected lifeline is thrown to Sadie, however, when Kate Shaw, a privileged private school teacher with a checkered past and a passion fueled by a need to make a difference to these forgotten people, is recruited by the town’s preacher to fill a position that so many before her have abandoned. Kate’s convictions, shaped by the feminist principles of Betty Friedan and Virginia Woolf, are put to work as she conspires to help Sadie learn to read despite her husband’s disapproval. As Kate becomes more involved, she is pulled into a tight-knit circle of helpers, protectors, and healers who teach her that the thin air of the mountain can yield grace in our most desperate moments.

In the stylistic tradition of Olive Kitteridge and The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, this intimate insight into a fiercely proud, tenacious community unfolds through the singular voices of a colorful cast of characters. As each narrator contributes to the dense, complex world of this lonely mountainside, a vivid portrait of Appalachian life in the mid-20th Century comes to life.

Leah Weiss recently retired from a twenty-four year career as an Executive Assistant to the Headmaster at private school in Lynchburg, VA, and is working on her second novel inspired by her mother’s childhood as one of fifteen children growing up on a tobacco farm in eastern North Carolina. Her stories have appeared in Deep South Magazine, The Simple Life Magazine, Blue Lake Review and Writers Journal.
Available products
Book

Published 2017-07-01 by Sourcebooks

Book

Published 2017-07-01 by Sourcebooks