All tagged Kentucky

Horse

Geraldine Brooks’s most recent novel, Horse (2022), threads the lives of various characters existing across 150 years of American history into a powerful story. The three storylines braid together as the narrative builds; and it is a horse that binds the strands to one another. As she has did in People of the Book, artifact and historical characters speak to the lives of modern ones and a tapestry of individuals and subplots work their way toward mutual resolution.

Hillbilly Elegy

J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy (2016) is memoir punctuated by social commentary. Thirty-something Vance tells his life story, which, no doubt, starts out like many kids who live amidst broken families and poverty in the American Midwest. Growing up in Ohio, the grandson of Kentucky hillbillies, Vance’s memoir becomes an elegy for all the Scots-Irish of Appalachia, all the hillbillies.