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Summary and Reviews of Gap Creek by Robert Morgan

Gap Creek by Robert R. Morgan

Gap Creek

by Robert R. Morgan
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Readers' Rating (18):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 1, 2000, 324 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Oct 2000, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

Set in the last years of the nineteenth century. Julie and Hank's new life in the valley of Gap Creek, in the Appalachian high country, is more complicated than the couple ever imagined.

There is a most unusual woman living in Gap Creek. Julie Harmon works hard, "hard as a man," they say, so hard that at times she's not sure she can stop. People depend on her to slaughter the hogs and nurse the dying. People are weak, and there is so much to do. She is just a teenager when her little brother dies in her arms. That same year she marries and moves down into the valley where floods and fire and visions visit themselves on her, and con men and drunks and lawyers come calling.

Julie and her husband discover that the modern world is complex and that it grinds ever on without pause or concern for their hard work. To survive, they must find out whether love can keep chaos and madness at bay.

Robert Morgan's latest novel, Gap Creek, returns his readers to the vivid world of the Appalachian high country. Julie and Hank's new life in the valley of Gap Creek in the last years of the nineteenth century is more complicated than the couple ever imagined. Sometimes it's hard to tell what to fear most--the fires and floods or the flesh-and-blood grifters, drunks, and busybodies who insinuate themselves into their new lives. Their struggles with nature, with work, with the changing century, and with their disappointments and triumphs make this a riveting follow-up to Morgan's acclaimed novel, The Truest Pleasure.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

The Boston Book Review
Morgan writes with an authority usually associated with the great novelists of the last century.

The New York Times Book Review
Morgan is among the relatively few American writers who write about work knowledgeably, and as if it really matters. . . . You begin to feel, as you sometimes do when reading Cormac McCarthy's or Harry Crews' early novels, that the author has been typing with blood on his hands and a good deal of it has rubbed off onto your shirtsleeves. . . .his stripped-down and almost primitive sentences burn with the raw, lonesome pathos of Hank William's best songs.

Booklist
Although Morgan, author of The Truest Pleasure (1995), has written better novels, even readers numbed by the seemingly endless series of disasters will respect Julie's strength of character and wish her well.

Kirkus Reviews
An ideal example of a regional tale: free of local color, respectful of his people, entirely free of condescension, Morgan offers a gliding, unhurried story of sufferings and hope that is simple and ragged, but never seems alien. This couples relentless misfortunes are given no more drama than they need, and all the compassion they deserve.

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Read-Alikes

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