The Risen: A Novel

by Ron Rash

Overview

“The Risen is an important novel — and an intriguing one — from one of our master storytellers. In its pages, the past rises up, haunting and chiding, demanding answers of us all.” —The News & Observer

New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash demonstrates his superb narrative skills in this suspenseful and evocative tale of two brothers whose lives are altered irrevocably by the events of one long-ago summer, one bewitching young woman—and the secrets that could destroy their lives.

While swimming in a secluded creek on a hot Sunday in 1969, sixteen-year-old Eugene and his older brother, Bill, meet the entrancing Ligeia. A sexy, free-spirited redhead from Daytona Beach banished to their small North Carolina town, Ligeia entrances the brothers, especially Eugene, who is drawn to her raw sensuality and rebellious attitude. Eugene begins to move farther and farther away from his brother, the cautious and dutiful Bill, and when Ligeia vanishes as suddenly as she appeared, the growing rift between the two brothers becomes immutable.

Decades later, the once close brothers now lead completely different lives. Bill is a gifted and successful surgeon, and a paragon of the community, while Eugene, the town reprobate, is a failed writer and determined alcoholic. When a shocking reminder of the past unexpectedly surfaces, Eugene is plunged back into that fateful summer, and the girl he cannot forget.

The deeper Eugene delves into his memories, the closer he comes to finding the truth. But can Eugene’s recollections be trusted? And will the truth set him free and offer salvation . . . or destroy his damaged life and everyone he loves?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062436320
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	394,988
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall, in addition to four prizewinning novels, including The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.

Editorial Reviews

Rash captures the gritty realities of modern Appalachia with mournful precision. . . . Beneath the surface, the novel contemplates more timeless questions about human frailty, the divinity of nature and the legacies of our native landscapes.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“So well-crafted that it reads like poetry. . . . Waterfall will leave the reader pondering the imponderables of life - and grateful, as Rash portrays, in being witness to life's beauties, even while surrounded by hardship.” — Jackson Clarion-Ledger

“A quick-paced, slender novel that captures the imperfections of how we all are, our weaknesses, our biases, our prejudices, and then, in times of stress and anxiety, if and how we emerge from those troubles with our morals intact.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Many have labeled [Rash] a Southern writer or an Appalachian writer, but those terms are deceptive. Rash's characters are certainly connected to their landscape, but, as with any work that transcends, Rash brings the reader to the universal human concerns inside the particular details.” — Electric Literature

Rash pulls the reader in with an element of suspense injected into his astute exploration of the clash of cultures, past and present. — Booklist

“The Risen is an important novel - and an intriguing one - from one of our master storytellers. In its pages, the past rises up, haunting and chiding, demanding answers of us all.” — Raleigh News & Observer

“A beautiful piece of craftsmanship...I’ve long thought Ron Rash as good as any contemporary American novelist I’ve read. This lovely and disturbing book confirms that opinion.” — Wall Street Journal

“Compelling... Rash, as always, has an absolutely sure sense of place... He is a riveting storyteller, ably heightening the tension between the story’s past and present... A story about control, evil and the nature of power — both to save and to kill.” — Washington Post

From the Publisher

So well-crafted that it reads like poetry. . . . Waterfall will leave the reader pondering the imponderables of life - and grateful, as Rash portrays, in being witness to life's beauties, even while surrounded by hardship.

Jackson Clarion-Ledger

A quick-paced, slender novel that captures the imperfections of how we all are, our weaknesses, our biases, our prejudices, and then, in times of stress and anxiety, if and how we emerge from those troubles with our morals intact.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

A beautiful piece of craftsmanship...I’ve long thought Ron Rash as good as any contemporary American novelist I’ve read. This lovely and disturbing book confirms that opinion.

Wall Street Journal

Rash captures the gritty realities of modern Appalachia with mournful precision. . . . Beneath the surface, the novel contemplates more timeless questions about human frailty, the divinity of nature and the legacies of our native landscapes.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Compelling... Rash, as always, has an absolutely sure sense of place... He is a riveting storyteller, ably heightening the tension between the story’s past and present... A story about control, evil and the nature of power — both to save and to kill.

Washington Post

Rash pulls the reader in with an element of suspense injected into his astute exploration of the clash of cultures, past and present.

Booklist

The Risen is an important novel - and an intriguing one - from one of our master storytellers. In its pages, the past rises up, haunting and chiding, demanding answers of us all.

Raleigh News & Observer

Many have labeled [Rash] a Southern writer or an Appalachian writer, but those terms are deceptive. Rash's characters are certainly connected to their landscape, but, as with any work that transcends, Rash brings the reader to the universal human concerns inside the particular details.

Electric Literature

Rash pulls the reader in with an element of suspense injected into his astute exploration of the clash of cultures, past and present.

Booklist

Compelling... Rash, as always, has an absolutely sure sense of place... He is a riveting storyteller, ably heightening the tension between the story’s past and present... A story about control, evil and the nature of power — both to save and to kill.

Washington Post

A beautiful piece of craftsmanship...I’ve long thought Ron Rash as good as any contemporary American novelist I’ve read. This lovely and disturbing book confirms that opinion.

Wall Street Journal

Rash captures the gritty realities of modern Appalachia with mournful precision. . . . Beneath the surface, the novel contemplates more timeless questions about human frailty, the divinity of nature and the legacies of our native landscapes.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

07/18/2016
Ligeia’s disappearance, and the events around it, were never resolved for Eugene, and he is stunned to find her ageless face suddenly appear on the cover of his local newspaper. Now a struggling alcoholic, Eugene was 16 when he first saw Ligeia, swimming nude, during the summer of 1969. Taken by her seemingly otherworldly presence, Eugene and his older brother, Bill, fell under her spell and were pulled into that adventurous summer of free love and experimentation. After Eugene succumbs to her enchantments and a brief romance ensues, a rift develops between the two brothers, who view the cultural changes sweeping America in drastically different ways. Contrary to what the brothers have always believed, Ligeia didn’t just leave town that summer. With her sudden resurrection, the most disturbing questions around what actually happened all those years before sets Eugene out to get the truth from his estranged brother, Bill, now a successful surgeon in the small North Carolina town where they grew up. Rash (Serena) invites readers into the lush Carolina hinterland where blissful innocence and larger cultural currents clash with deep consequences for malleable Eugene. Beyond the propulsion of Rash’s thrilling whodunit plot is his characteristically excellent prose. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

04/15/2016
In 1969, at a quietly burbling creek near their North Carolina home, 16-year-old Eugene and older brother Bill meet gorgeous, rule-breaking Ligeia, who's visiting from Daytona Beach, FL, and introduces them to the joys of the counterculture—with long-term repercussions. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

2016-06-22
The latest from prolific poet and fiction writer Rash, a 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award finalist for Serena, provides a damaged man's look back at a long-ago and haunted past.It's 1969. Eugene and his older brother, Bill, who live with their mother and their tyrannical town-doctor grandfather in a small town in western North Carolina, are spending a summer afternoon at their remote fishing hole when they encounter a sylphlike young woman—a "mermaid," she says—who introduces herself as Ligeia. She's from Florida and has been banished to this backwater after a misadventure in a commune, to live with a preacher uncle and his family. She is a miracle of exoticism, an in-this-place unprecedented representative of hippiedom, and the boys immediately sign up for training in free love. The more ambitious and dutiful brother, Bill, already well on his way to the medical career his grandfather has ordained for him, quickly pulls back, but his more impulsive younger brother, smitten, falls into an extended summer romance with Ligeia (to whom he supplies stolen sample packs of the downers she prefers) and embarks in earnest on what will be a more enduring relationship with drink. Flash-forward 46 years: Bill has fulfilled his destiny and become a celebrated surgeon, while Eugene, who once dabbled promisingly with writing, has given it up and devoted himself full-time to alcohol and self-loathing. He lives in exile from his family, having scarred and nearly killed his daughter in a booze-caused crash, and he and Bill are only rarely and tensely in touch. But when a skeleton is found, spilled into the creek after decades shrouded in a blue tarp, the two brothers are forced to wrangle again with each other and with the events of that fateful summer. The novel hits its share of false or clumsy notes, but it's not ruined by them thanks to Rash's sure evocation of the time and place and the complexity and poignancy of his portrait of his protagonist.

Kirkus Reviews