Ron Rash - Burning Bright

After a while longer, she hid the newspaper again and lay down in the bed. The rain was steady now on the cabin’s cedar shingles. The young one breathed steadily in the crib beside the bed. Rain hard, she thought, thinking of what she’d be planting first when daylight came. Bad as it was that it had happened in the first place, there’d been some luck in it too. At least it wasn’t winter when the ground was hard as granite. She could get it done by noon, especially after a soaking rain, then rest a while before doing her inside chores, maybe even have time to plant some tomato and squash before supper.

Thanks to my editor, Lee Boudreaux, and my agent, Marly Rusoff. Thanks also to Abigail Holstein, Mihai Rãdulescu, Western Carolina University, and my family.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the publications in which these stories first appeared: “Hard Times” in Sewanee Review ; “Back of Beyond” and “The Ascent” in Tin House ; “Dead Confederates” in Shenandoah ; “The Corpse Bird” in South Carolina Review ; “Waiting for the End of the World” in Oxford American ; “Into the Gorge” in Southern Review ; “Burning Bright” in Ecotone ; “Return” in Saltgrass ; “The Woman Who Believed in Jaguars” in Carolina Quarterly ; “Falling Star” in Crossroads ; “Lincolnites” in Smoky Mountain Living .

RON RASHis the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Serena , which was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, as well as three other prizewinning novels, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River , and The World Made Straight ; three collections of poems; and three collections of stories, including Chemistry and Other Stories , which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice a recipient of the O. Henry Prize, Rash teaches at Western Carolina University.