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  1. Navigate Home
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  3. Holding On To Nothing

EBOOK

Holding On To Nothing

Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne
4
(22)
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Pages
116
Year
2019
Language
English
Publisher
Blair

About

Lucy Kilgore has her bags packed for her escape from her rural Tennessee upbringing, but a drunken mistake forever tethers her to the town and one of its least-admired residents, Jeptha Taylor, who becomes the father of her child. Together, these two young people work to form a family, though neither has any idea how to accomplish that, and the odds are against them in a place with little to offer other than bluegrass music, tobacco fields, and a Walmart full of beer and firearms for the hunting season. Their path is harrowing, but Lucy and Jeptha are characters to love, and readers will root for their success in a novel so riveting that no one will want to turn out the light until they know whether this family will survive.

In luminous prose, debut novelist Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne brings us a present-day Appalachian story in the tradition of Lee Smith, Silas House, and Ron Rash, cast without sentiment or cliché, but with a genuine and profound understanding of the place and its people.

Related Subjects

  • Southern
  • Adult Fiction
  • Small Town & Rural
  • Literary
  • General
  • Family Life

Reviews

"Holding On To Nothing is a resonant song of the South, all whiskey, bluegrass, Dolly Parton, tobacco fields, and women who know better but still fall for the lowdown men whom they know will disappoint them. Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne writes with extraordinary love and compassion of the lives of her flawed characters; she shines a clear, calm light on their tragedies, their joys, and their hard-wo
Lauren Groff, Florida and Fates and Furies
"Shelburne's stunning debut novel is a long trip into small-town Tennessee. . .riveting, touching, heart-wrenching, tragic, and beautiful."
Booklist
"Forget Hillbilly Elegy and read this gorgeous novel instead. Every detail is exactly right. Contemporary themes of work and no work, drinking, sex, guns, music, community, and no future-along with in-depth character development and a hard-driving plot-make this a book you literally cannot put down."
Lee Smith, Dimestore: A Writer's Life and The Last Girls

Artists

Elizabeth Chiles ShelburneAuthor