Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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OCTOBER 7-13, 2015 UCW 19 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Ron Rash, Western Carolina professor and author of five previous novels including Serena, captures his beloved North Carolina mountains at their best. And their worst. In his new book, Above the Waterfall, his main characters, though possessing overwhelmingly positive qualities, have flaws that complicate our admiration for them. For instance, there are two narrators. One, Les, is a respected and effective sheriff. However, he takes small but regular payoffs from the local marijuana growers. The other, Becky, is a park ranger, whose love of nature and service is clouded by psychological damage that occurred when she was a child and witnessed a brutal shooting at school. Using the voices of the sheriff and the park ranger, Rash describes the local lovely mountains in passages throughout the book, beginning with its opening paragraph. "Though sunlight tinges the mountains, black leatherwinged bodies swing low. First fireflies blink languidly. Beyond this meadow, cicadas rev and slow like sewing machines. All else ready for night except night itself. I watch last light lift off level land. Ground shadows seep and thicken. Circling trees form banks. The meadow itself becomes a pond filling, on its surface dozens of black-eyed susans." Balancing the mountains' beauty are the ugly realities of life, like the struggles of poverty and drug addiction. Rash's description of the sheriff's raid on the mobile home of a suspected meth cooking operation is brilliant. He brings his readers into the suspense, danger, horror and disappointment of a law enforcement assault into the broken lives of meth-addicted people. The sheriff explains that although television has glamorized meth, "You didn't smell the moldy food, or the vomit, …or blood, the meth itself burning your nose like ammonia, or how, once you'd arrested them, you turned your face so you didn't smell their rotting mouths. No, TV couldn't give you that." Last week on UNC-TV's "North Carolina Now," Rash said, "I write about it. But the one thing I don't want to do is glamorize it." In a response to questions about the current status of meth addiction and manufacture in our mountains, he continued, "Well, I think we're starting to see it, I hope, burn itself out. I mean, there seems to be other drugs coming in. But the meth has just been devastating, I think because it's been so easy to make. Almost anyone can make it. Materials are out there and inexpensive and, as I say, incredibly addictive. I can't think of a more sinister drug." Rash wanted his book to show how the tragedy of addiction extended to the parents of meth addicts. He said that the scene in which the sheriff had to tell his friends that their daughter had been arrested was "maybe the most powerful scene and the hardest scene for me to write. And the heartbreak there, I thought, was to me, what I wanted to focus on." In the non-fiction mountains, Rash says, "Parents are watching their children that they love get caught up in this and not be able to get out. The attempts to get them to go to rehab, too often the failure of that; as a parent, what could be more heartbreaking than to watch your child descend into this?" Still, Rash believes Above the Waterfall is "my most hopeful book." "I hope that the reader senses that this is also a book about wonder and the beauty of the world and of people trying to do their best and people redeeming themselves. I think particularly with Les and Becky, the two main characters, that these are people who have gone through tough times and been able to survive and become better." Whether or not "Above the Waterfall" is his most hopeful book, it may be his most powerful, and certainly an important one for North Carolinians to read. His Most Hopeful Book by D.G. MARTIN D.G. MARTIN, Host of UNC's Bookwatch, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200 • As a full service dealer we have over 50 trailer units for sale in various sizes, colors and options for any of your hauling needs. • Elite dealer for Forest River Trailers as well as other brands like dump, enclosed, pull behind and many more. 910-424-7660 910-424-7660 We also have tires available for your trailer needs. Est. 2011 www.diamondtrailersales.com • We also have trailer tires available for your trailer needs. Bring in this ad or mention it to receive