Vendor
	Liepman Literary Agency Marc Koralnik
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items
Weblink
http://chriscander.com/

WHISPER HOLLOW

Chris Cander

Spanning a period of twenty-five years, WHISPER HOLLOW delves into the interwoven lives of two women and their families in a deeply religious and insular coal-mining community in Verra, West Virginia.

Myrthen and Alta could not be more different. With a heart hardened by her religious fervor and thwarted aspirations; Myrthen is capable of unimaginable acts in blind pursuit of her perceived destiny. Alta, is a gentle soul whose life has been limited and defined by her role as a dutiful wife. As their stories intertwine and unfold, guilt, hidden love, secrecy, and violence begin to surface, threatening to destroy the integrity of the entire town. With a powerful narrative voice as sweeping and unrelenting as a force of nature, this densely plotted novel by Chris Candor explores the explosive power of unspoken truth "buried under time and pressure" like a seam of coal. Chris Cander is a novelist, children's book author, freelance writer, and teacher for Houston based Writers in the Schools. Kirkus named her debut novel, 11 Stories, best indie general fiction of 2013. More of her work can be found at www.chriscander.com.

Available products
Book Published 2015-02-01 by Other Press

Comments

Cander weaves together the stories of these varied characters across nearly five decades with skill and grace, and in her hands, Whisper Hollow grows into much more than the sum of its many parts. The result is a memorable novel about the bonds of town and family, the strength of friendships in unlikely places and the power of secrets to shape a lifeor many livesoften without anyone even recognizing it.

The men in Chris Cander's Whisper Hollow toil underground, in the dark and dangerous coal mines of West Virginia. But her women mine territory twice as dark and twice as dangerous, they mine the human heart. Love and loss, devotion and longing, hope and despair, Cander renders all of this and more through the lives of three women spanning more than fifty years. Here is a novel so full of lifeof its beauty and crueltythat I emerged from it like one of those men walking from mines she so wonderfully evokes, like a man walking from the darkness into the light.

"Cander superbly envisions the town, its residents' dynamics, and the early twentieth-century immigrant experience. Although Mythren's narrative turns a bit too gothic, Cander rewards the reader with Alta and Lidia, well-developed, believable characters whose mental fortitude and capacity to love linger in the reader's mind long after the last page.", Janet St. John

[Whisper Hollow] is inextricably rooted in West Virginia coal countrythe rough locale that determines and intertwines [Cander's] characters' fates Cander closely tracks how Myrthen's and Alta's romantic decisions unknowingly complicate each other's lives in the lead-up to a tragic incident that bisects the novel [and] admirably captures the lack of choice that men and women have in rural West Virginia.

[A] sweeping novel Cander divinely delves into multiple points of view, crafting a collage of vibrant, layered characters while charting six decades of poignant, precise moments. A distinctive novel that sublimely measures the distressed though determined heartbeat of a small mountain community.

Spare, elegant writing by the author of 11 Stories evokes a bleak atmosphere and creates a smooth, compelling narrative much of the prose is so outstanding, this writer is clearly gifted. Give this literary, plot-driven novel to those who enjoy the West Virginia setting and who like a gentle handling of their tragedies.