Description

‘One of the great American authors at work today’ New York Times

ONE OF THE NEW YORKER’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2023

It is 1951. The close-knit community of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, does not welcome those who are different.

Jacob Hampton’s wealthy parents disinherited him when he married Naomi, an uneducated hotel maid from out of town. They had bigger plans for him.

Now Jacob has been called up to fight in Korea, leaving a pregnant Naomi behind. The only person he can entrust to take care of her is his lifelong friend, Blackburn Gant. Blackburn, who tends the local cemetery alone, is an outsider too, his appearance irrevocably altered by childhood disease.

Slowly the two outcasts grow closer, their friendship blooming under small acts of kindness. Then, as they await news of Jacob’s return, a terrible, shattering act of deception derails all their lives. But no secret can stay hidden for ever.

Tender and luminous with truth, The Caretaker is a riveting story about the bonds of friendship, the contradictions of family and what it really means to love.

Publisher Review

With each Ron Rash story, you expect flawed people trying desperately to survive against the odds and a rich sense of place, and images that linger, and beautiful language that you catch yourself reading over and over. What you don’t always expect is a wicked plot. The Caretaker delivers all of the above in a story that becomes a race to the finish — JOHN GRISHAM There’s a flint and an unflinching realism underneath . . . Rash’s 20th book is among his best * * Kirkus Reviews * * Potent and rewarding . . . Rash expertly and seamlessly ratchets up the suspense and melodrama . . . The lyrically nuanced prose faithfully evokes the Appalachian landscape, and Rash again showcases an ability to dig beneath the surface of his characters to expose their base desires and intentions. This is exactly the kind of humanitarian storytelling that fans have come to expect and savour from him * * Publishers Weekly * * Praise for Nothing Gold Can Stay:
These stories are wonderful. They give me an ache in the heart and I have to sit and look out of my window and think over and over again — ALICE MUNRO Perfect! So many brilliant stories, brilliantly written . . . all moving, witty — CLAIRE FULLER Praise for Ron Rash: Ron Rash is a writer of both the darkly beautiful and the sadly true . . . One of our very finest novelists — RICHARD RUSSO One of the great American authors at work today * * New York Times * * A riveting storyteller * * Washington Post * * Rash’s evocative rendering of the blighted landscape and the tough characters who inhabit it recalls both John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy * * New Yorker * *