A Blue Moon in PoorwaterCathryn Hankla's first novel is an engaging coming-of-age story set in the small Appalachian mining town of Poorwater, Virginia. It is the summer of 1968, and the narrator, inquisitive ten-year-old Dorie Parks, is getting ready to enter fifth grade when her errant older brother Willie returns to town. A religious fanatic and suspected drug user, Willie represents to the residents of Poorwater the hippie counterculture that threatens their conservative town, and his return is the catalyst for a string of strange and sometimes tragic events. Dorie's father, a miner, begins a dangerous labor rights crusade after a mining accident leaves a close friend dead. Dorie struggles to understand the class differences that separate "holler kids" and trailer park children like herself from her wealthy friend Betty. Hankla's graceful writing evokes the wonder and growing sophistication of a young girl on the verge of adolescence and an unknown future. A Blue Moon in Poorwater offers a moving yet unsentimental slice of life in Appalachian, Virginia. |
Contents
The Christmas Train 1942 | 1 |
The Black Ball | 4 |
Strange Feelings | 14 |
The Homecoming | 22 |
Holy Rollers | 34 |
The Snake | 43 |
Genie in a Bottle | 57 |
Wild Stories | 70 |
Spies | 140 |
Up in the Air | 149 |
Halloween | 169 |
Facing the Shadow | 189 |
The Breaks | 194 |
Doors | 202 |
The Story of the Humpback | 206 |
The Fall of Law and Order 1968 | 217 |
On the Banks of the Wye 1955 | 80 |
School | 84 |
New Secrets | 99 |
Riddles and Holes | 105 |
The Identity Number | 112 |
Blue Moon at the Edge of Summer 1958 | 124 |
Open Simsim | 128 |
The Red Bird | 220 |
The Revelations | 225 |
Question | 232 |
Every Man for Himself | 238 |
The Hook | 245 |
Last Things | 263 |