One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash

One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash

Equal parts vintage crime novel and Southern Gothic, full of aching ambivalence and hard compromises, and rounded off by bad faith and bad choices, One Foot in Eden is a veritable garden of earthly disquiet."
-Los Angeles Times

Will Alexander is the sheriff in a small town in southern Appalachia, and he knows that the local thug Holland Winchester has been murdered. The only thing is the sheriff can find neither the body nor someone to attest to the killing. Simply, almost elementally told through the voices of the sheriff, a local farmer, his beautiful wife, their son, and the sheriff's deputy, One Foot in Eden signals the bellwether arrival of Ron Rash, one the most mature and distinctive voices in Southern literature.

Ron Rash is the author of various collections of poetry and short stories, as well as the prize-winning novels One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight. He has been awarded an O. The Fellowship of Southern Writers awarded him the Henry Prize and the James Still Award. He won the 2004 Weatherford Award for Best Novel and the 2005 SEBA Best Book Award for Fiction for Saints at the River. Rash lives in Clemson, South Carolina, and holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University.