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The Cove

3.61 of 5 stars 3.61 · rating details · 3,271 ratings · 655 reviews

The New York Times bestselling author of Serena returns to Appalachia, this time at the height of World War I, with the story of a blazing but doomed love affair caught in the turmoil of a nation at war

Deep in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina lies the cove, a dark, forbidding place where spirits and fetches wander, and even the light fears to travel. Or so the tow...more

Hardcover, 272 pages

Published April 10th 2012 by Ecco

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Feb 03, 2012 karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

RON RASH!!

another quietly wonderful book from ron rash, about a couple of outcasts trying to grab a little happiness out of a life filled with loss and loneliness.

this one takes place in north carolina during WWI,in a remote and "gloamy" cove, where a brother and sister live isolated by superstition and circumstances. the sister,laurel, has a large purple birthmark believed by the entire outlying town to be a sign of witchcraft,and the cove where the two reside is believed to be haunted. after t...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Will Byrnes rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-of-the-year-2012

UPDATED - 4/3/12 - see link at bottom

The Cove, a remote locale in North Carolina, is a cursed place, or so everyone seems to think. The story opens in the 1950s when a man from the TVA comes by, preparing the area for flooding as part of a dam project. That the elders he encounters think burying the cove under tons of water is a good idea offers a first indication of trouble. When the man, trying for a drink in a well near some abandoned buildings at the site, brings up murky water covering a sk...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Lou rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: march-2012, mystery-thriller, historical-fiction

This was a wonderful historical story and Ron Rash is a writer to add alongside great southern gothic styled writers. Just as many have mentioned Ron Rash strikes up feelings of being present with great writers such as Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy.
This story leaves a mark with characters that are lonely and modest, rich in kindness and deeply warm to others even though they face inequalities due to race, heritage and have been marked in a superstitious ways as cursed. A brother and a sister are...more This was a wonderful historical story and Ron Rash is a writer to add alongside great southern gothic styled writers. Just as many have mentioned Ron Rash strikes up feelings of being present with great writers such as Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy.
This story leaves a mark with characters that are lonely and modest, rich in kindness and deeply warm to others even though they face inequalities due to race, heritage and have been marked in a superstitious ways as cursed. A brother and a sister are two main characters that at times bring a tear in your eye for the happiest and the saddest of times they face in this WW1 period story.

The authors successfully places you in the atmosphere of that era and especially the Cove. The story flowed in an eloquent pace, hard times and romantic occasions really a throwback to the storytelling of Charles Dickens. This was my first reading from Ron Rash and won't be the last I felt in the hands of a great storyteller, at one point i was reminiscing on an equally great story Great Expectations as you do want great things to happen to Laurel Shelton and her guest that she becomes attached to. That guest is equally lost for words and cannot communicate by tongue but touched others hearts with tunes from a flute and gathers attention like the pied piper of Hamlin. Attention is what he does not need, as the man who struck up from nowhere and finds a lady to warm his heart soon faces harder times, and those around him go through their worst and happiest of times. A story to remember with an exceptional quality of writing historical, very romantic with a overshadowing melancholy presence from beginning to end.
Bravo!

Check out also myreview @ http://more2read.com/review/the-cove-by-ron-rash/
and these videos there:

Gary Carden interviews Ron Rash (video): http://more2read.com/gary-carden-interviews-ron-rash-video/

Ron Rash reads from Serena http://more2read.com/ron-rash-reads-from-serena/

Ron Rash Interview by Stacey Cochran http://more2read.com/ron-rash-author-video/(less)

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Mar 01, 2012 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Ron Rash has a sublime sense of place, atmospheric detail and colloquial manners. The Appalachian landscapes in his novels are vivid, rugged. Colors, smells, and sounds take on a sentient quality, and there's a brutal, timeless delicacy to his terrains. Moment to moment, you move from the crest of creation to the threat of destruction. His stories convey themselves through the power of domain. His latest is a testament to the most fertile aspects of his craft, which shimmer through an otherwise...more Ron Rash has a sublime sense of place, atmospheric detail and colloquial manners. The Appalachian landscapes in his novels are vivid, rugged. Colors, smells, and sounds take on a sentient quality, and there's a brutal, timeless delicacy to his terrains. Moment to moment, you move from the crest of creation to the threat of destruction. His stories convey themselves through the power of domain. His latest is a testament to the most fertile aspects of his craft, which shimmer through an otherwise flawed and listless story.

A short, mysterious prologue introduces us to a forbidding, rural North Carolina cove in 1957, and is followed by the main story, which takes place toward the end of WW I on the same rough and haunted turf. Laurel Shelton, an ostracized young woman, believed to be a hexed witch that causes harm and doom to others, lives with her brother, Hank, a disabled soldier recently returned from battle. Hank is engaged to marry a woman whose father needs to be convinced that Hank isn't also possessed. Into their solitary existence comes a mute flautist, Walter, who changes the course of their lives.

The alchemic beauty of the story is largely communed through Rash's formidable powers of description. The cove area, where Laurel and Hank Shelton live, has a supernatural aura. It is evident that the cove's mystical power will impel events along a trenchant course of turmoil and danger. The tension mounts early, with subtle and bold implications of the cove's spectral qualities and the Shelton's cursed history, which are woven inextricably together.

However, there are structural and character-related problems that make this story fall short of the author's intentions. It is difficult to relate them all without giving spoilers, so I will confine them to a few examples. First, the characters are static stereotypes that don't developed beyond what you see on introduction. They are either good and heroic or bad and polluted, and you know on contact. A few, like Walter, have hidden natures that are revealed gradually, but they don't truly evolve.

Secondary characters--Hank's friends, for instance, are stock set pieces. Slidell (Hank's closest friend) and his moonshine distilling behaviors are derivative and prosaic. If you want to be captivated by moonshine madness, read Finn, which places you vividly into the depths of this culture. I got tired of scenes of sittin' on the porch drinking moonshine, or laying about drinking moonshine, or recovering from the effects of moonshine. It added nothing to the significance of story, and seemed more like filler. Moreover, Slidell had minimal dimension beyond the buddy sidekick.

The villain, recruitment officer Chancey Feith, was a thin membrane of a figure. His presence was a platform for Rash to telegraph the theme of ignorant discrimination and flag-waving patriotism. He was a formula jingoist character that we knew to despise, who had no depth beyond pettiness and nationalism (with an obvious wink to today's imperialism). He was a flat, predictable entity designed to manipulate the story in a deterministic direction.

The plot is simple, and for all the meandering that Rash precipitated, it could have been reduced to a short story format. The structure was wobbly; for instance, he built up an imaginary dream world for Laurel to imbibe, where she insisted on knowing and recreating a historical place (that was central to the plot), leading the reader on a launched journey that demanded some kind of realization or corollary. However, Rash just dumped it with a reductive denouement.

As a matter of fact, several mobilized events and ideas were bluntly dispatched in this manner. He rushed the important events, especially as the climax drew nearer. Directions drifted and dropped and the story was sidetracked with spurious shifts, as Rash let the grains of some incipient ideas vanish with an inchoate shrug. It appeared as if he was trying to write two stories, and then eliminated one without properly trimming and removing surplus. Some of the context just shuffled into discarded notions. The myth of the cove was ultimately a tepid trickle, as its meaning wasn't revelatory or fulfilling.

At the end of the day, this is a mixed bag. The book is worth reading simply for the sense of place and time, providing an intimate feeling of color and history through geography and atmosphere. Rash is an author with a subtle and transcendent gift for transporting the reader to the Appalachian wilderness. However, once you get there, you're stuck in a stagnant, lackluster zone. (less)

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Apr 11, 2013 Amy Pyles rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

This is the type of book that, after reading, I can say that I appreciated. I cannot say that I liked it. The writing style is lyrical and almost poetic, and Rash does a great job of creating atmosphere and place. I, however, am a sucker for plot and characterization, and this novel fell short on both accounts.

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May 19, 2012 Julie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: best-of-2012, read-2012, usa-historical, historical-fiction

The dank and dangerous cylinder of a new well, where the walls could collapse at any moment, crushing the digger in a muddy grave; a valley so overwhelmed by a cliff of granite that light shudders and dies in its wet shadow; a voice choked from sound, leaving a man trapped in silence; a young woman isolated by fear and suspicion in a remote mountain cabin: these are the acedian images Ron Rash writes to sobering effect in The Cove.

This is a novel of a place seemingly suspended in time, a forgott...more The dank and dangerous cylinder of a new well, where the walls could collapse at any moment, crushing the digger in a muddy grave; a valley so overwhelmed by a cliff of granite that light shudders and dies in its wet shadow; a voice choked from sound, leaving a man trapped in silence; a young woman isolated by fear and suspicion in a remote mountain cabin: these are the acedian images Ron Rash writes to sobering effect in The Cove.

This is a novel of a place seemingly suspended in time, a forgotten hollow in the Blue Ridge mountains of western North Carolina, where venomous snakes slither, wild parakeets flit like flocks of bright green faeries and where residents still believe in witches' curses. But the modern world invades this isolated land with the wounded and dead from European trenches. As their broken bodies are returned home, fear of the enemy Hun incites public hysteria.

Rash weaves a story with themes that ring loudly to the present-day: how patriotism can be a mask for prejudice and a justification for violence, how war robs us of our sensibilities as well as our citizens.Yet instead of stating the obvious, he shows us with an atmospheric mystery that runs languid on the surface, but races with an unstoppable current in depths you cannot fathom.

The Cove is written in an opalescent and mannered style that is reminiscent of a 19th century Gothic romance. It abounds with literary archetypes: a persecuted young woman dreaming of escape and the love of a strong man; a mysterious stranger who speaks with music rather than words; a wealthy young villain with delusions of grandeur; a Greek chorus of simple country folk; a gruff but well-meaning brother. We know these characters because they have been with us from our earliest memories of faerie tales and mythology. We sense that our star-crossed lovers will fare no better than Romeo and Juliet; we are wiser than to hope for a hero. Whether or not a hero appears is for you to discover.

The novel's flaws can be found in Rash's over-simplification of the pretentious and cowardly Army recruiter, Chauncey Feith, and the backward suspicions of the townsfolk. He also dwells overlong on Laurel's isolation and loneliness and treats her response to romance with little-girl wonder, which nearly degrades her character rather than invoking the reader's empathy.

Despite some of the weaker character development, this reader is delighted to have discovered a writer who can craft a powerful story with captivating language. (less)

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Jul 02, 2012 Glenda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2012

Set in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina at the height of WWI, we meet Laurel Shelton. She is seen as an outcast or witch due to an unusual birthmark and local superstitions about The Cove where she lives. Her parents have died and her brother Hank comes back from the war minus a hand. While walking through the cove and listening to birdsong, she comes across a young man playing a silver flute. Laurel stays hidden, visiting him almost daily, but never revealing herself until the day she...more

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Jul 08, 2012 Joyce rated it 4 of 5 stars

Do not expect another Serena with this book, it is a shorter, less epic novel. Strongly plotted with a mmore limited cast of characters than Serena, in some ways it is more of a page-turner than Serena. Complexity of plot builds to a dramatic denouement, but as usual with Rash's works, the reader feels imminent doom almost immediately. The WWI period setting in deep Southern Appalachia is important in depicting man's capacity for intolerance, superstition, and, at the same time, victimization....more

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Jul 06, 2012 Erica Harmon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-by-men

Turns out I like a well-researched historical novel, and reading about rural living whilst hiding out in a rustic cabin in Maine might have been the best situation to read The Cove. Despite being glued to this novel until I finished, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. I had some small complaints, like that it wrapped up in too tidy a package at the end, and that the metaphors were a bit too obvious. But my real issue was that the characters were believable only in the way an old photo of a st...more

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Apr 22, 2013 Tony rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

THE COVE. (2012). Ron Rash. *****.
This is an excellent novel by an author that I recently discovered, that is almost a hypnotic read. I found myself staying up late and getting up early so that I could finish it. It is set in Appalachia, and tells the story of Laura and her brother Hank. They live alone on a piece of land that is shunned by the rest of the people of the town because they believe that it has a curse on it. Laura suffers additionally because of a prominent birthmark that people be...more

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Mar 29, 2013 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ron Rash is a very good writer. I'm happy I stumbled onto his book.It is set in the Appalachians of North Carolina at the height of WWI, centered on Laurel Shelton. She is seen as an outcast or witch due to an unusual birthmark and local superstitions about The Cove where she lives. Her parents have died and her brother Hank comes back from the war minus a hand. While walking through the cove and listening to birdsong, she comes across a young man playing a silver flute. Laurel stays hidden, vis...more

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Mar 28, 2013 Mysterious Bookshop rated it 5 of 5 stars

There’s a certain thrill when one encounters such a lyrical author as Rash. How effortlessly he seems to spin his tales and draw such full-blooded characters. The Cove is his first novel since Serena, which read like a modern telling of MacBeth in the backwoods of North Carolina and was a Pen/Faulkner Finalist. In his latest novel, Rash again mines the deep cultural history of North Carolina, this time during the height of WWI. Laurel Shelton lives in a cove surrounded by cliffs and rumored by t...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorite-authors, history, southern-lit, young-adult-youth

I continue to love Ron Rash. He is an amazing author who writes in a poetic style that I really enjoy. He writes about places I've been and people I can relate to. Rash continues to tell stories that captivate me. He develops characters that I feel like I know. I love how he ties in true historical events and creates stories around these events. This was a great story from Western North Carolina during World War I. It is amazing to see how the events of World War I impacted the thinking of peopl...more

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Feb 01, 2013 George King rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ron Rash accomplishes a neat trick in THE COVE. Today there is much anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. as well as general xenophobia directed at any group considered “the other.” In Rash's novel, the reader’s sentiment gravitates to the immigrant, in this case a German musician whose misfortune is that he’s playing aboard a German ship in U.S. waters when World War I breaks out. He and his fellow Germans are interned in a prison camp in North Carolina, he escapes, and he subsequently interacts...more

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Nov 16, 2012 Bobbi rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: appalachia, historical-fiction

The story takes place 3 miles from the town of Mars Hill, NC. I live 2 miles from Mars Hill so I keep looking out my windows trying to find the cove that he talks about! So far, no luck. I'm not a great fan of Ron Rash and this one is distracting since it involves so many nearby localities. More later.

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So, now I've finished it and am trying to figure out why I disliked it so much. Because it takes place where I live, all of the historical inconsistencies really bothered me. He has the French...more

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Sep 04, 2012 MissSusie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, southern-fiction, historical-fiction, reviewed

This is a beautiful and heartbreaking book. Set in the Appalachians during WWI and hate towards Germans is running rampant with the help of one fervent recruiter Chauncey who is on a witch hunt for anything German. At the same time on a farm in the cove lives Laurel a young woman with a wine splotch birthmark that people in town say is a curse and call her a witch and the townspeople won’t let her go to school because she may harm their children. A superstitious lot they are, that makes for a lo...more

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Jul 28, 2012 Nicole rated it 4 of 5 stars

A beautiful story about the less attractive side of society.

World War I in the Appalachia countryside has brought out the prejudices in people. These prejudices have always been aimed at Laurel Shelton, a young woman who is labeled as a witch and shunned by the locals, but now these biases have extended to Germans and have been retracted from war heroes. Laurel lives in The Cove. An area that is constantly in the shadow of the high ravine walls and avoided by everyone except her brother Hank and...more

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Jul 25, 2012 Thomas rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ron Rash is great. I loved "Serena" to death. This one is less ambitious, but it's a pleasure all the same. Part ghost story, steeped in the hauntedness of the deep Smoky Mountain woods (which is where I read some of it, going all Method Reader). I will say that it is a very odd experience to read a book that has a lot of similarities to one's own -- like my debut novel, this is set in a small mountain town during WW1 and involves the harboring of a mysterious stranger, whom the more belligerent...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Walt rated it 4 of 5 stars

rustic yarn in North Carolina during WWI. Located near the hardscrabble village of Mars Hill, the cove is shrouded in superstition, 'a place where ghosts and fetches wandered.' Nearby, the alienated Laurel Shelton lives with her wounded war veteran brother in an isolated cabin. While out doing laundry by the creek one day, Laurel discovers Walter Smith, an illiterate, mute flutist en route to New York City, who has been incapacitated by hornet stings. As she nurses the mysterious Walter back to...more

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Jul 17, 2012 megan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical_fiction, southernlit

This book starts out (like three pages in) with a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) agent finding a skull in a well in the 1950s. The well is in a cove that the TVA agent plans to flood and he's come to visit the region before its buried underwater forever.

This scene sets the stage for our story which happens 30+ years earlier during the waning days of World War I. Hank and his sister Laurel live alone in a cove in North Carolina. Laurel has a birthmark on her body that makes the superstitious p...more

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Jun 30, 2012 Michelle rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, historical

2.5 stars. This is a weird book, but I read it in one sitting so that counts for something. It takes place in some Appalachian cove mid-to-late WWI. Laurel is an assumed witch, why they don’t ever fully explain other than she has a birthmark and that bad things seem to happen around her, which I’d think would be par for the course if you live in Appalachia. Laurel comes upon an injured, mute man and nurses him back to health. What is this man’s deal? Where does he come from? Wait and find out!

I...more

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May 29, 2012 William Clemens rated it 1 of 5 stars

This is one of those books where I just don't understand why people are loving it so much. I found it incredibly hard to slog through, full of characters who are so one dimensional I couldn't take them seriously, and set against a backdrop that just didn't impress.

Everyone seems to go on about the nature in the book, and how it captures the feel of Appalachia, but I just didn't see it. He certainly mentions nature, and goes on about how dark the cove is and how bright it makes the sun feel, but...more

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May 25, 2012 Brie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was a wonderful read. The story is well told and the descriptions of the world around the characters is breath-taking. It kept me reading the book straight through to the end.

The story is one that is set during WW1...when the US was fighting Germany and the young men sent to fight the war were coming back broken, in spirit or in body, or both. Prejudice against Germans is very high and everyone is looking for spies among people who know German (like language teachers) or of German back...more

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May 21, 2012 Regina Spiker rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: appalachia, birthmarks, coves, north-carolina, world-war-l, german-occupation, vaterland

Such a beautiful, quiet, haunting book....of wrongdoings, bittersweet love, fear and judgment, brave heroes and shameful cowards, and life-changing secrets.

Set in the mountains and coves of North Carolina, the main character, lovely, lonely Laurel Shelton, is thought to be a witch by the superstitious people of Mars Hill - her birthmark proves it according to them. Laurel lives in a backwoods cove, so deep that the sun only dapples it occasionally, with her war hero brother Hank. While walking t...more

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May 19, 2012 Rose Mary Achey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ron Rash style of writing takes you back to a simpler time. His lyrical rhythm entrances the reader. In The Cove, Rash again sets his characters in the mountains of Western North Carolina and draws from the region’s historical past.

During World War I, German citizens were interned in Hot Springs, North Carolina. One of these men escapes and finds his way downstream in Marshall, North Carolina. To keep his identity a secret he claims a childhood affliction that impedes his ability to speak. Weav...more

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May 13, 2012 Jerrilynn rated it 3 of 5 stars

I enjoy Ron Rash, a regional author with an excellent gift for atmosphere. The language and imagery that Rash uses in The Cove, I was completely transported into the gorge.
This novel deals with the aftermath of war, (WWI) actually the last year, one that has touched many families in "the cove." Laurel and her brother Hank, living in the cursed, haunted Cove. Shunned by many towns people.
One of the strengths of The Cove is the internal life of Laurel. Rash takes us to her tragic schooldays, wher...more

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Apr 29, 2012 Bridget rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-reads

I had an Advance Reader's Edition of this book, and just got around to reading it in the past week. I had read a couple of very brief reviews of it, and wasn't sure if I'd like it. But here it was, and it was worth trying.

I enjoyed the story very much. It tells of Laurel Shelton and her brother Hank, who live in the family cabin in a cove that is supposedly cursed. Hank has returned from WWII after losing an arm, and he is more accepted by the people in the nearby town. Laurel, though, has a lar...more

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Apr 28, 2012 Jan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

The Cove is one of those novels that has wonderful atmosphere. Set at the end of World War I in the Appalachian Mountains, it centers around the dank and purportedly haunted cove where Laurel and Hank Shelton live. Laurel, born with a birthmark, is feared by the superstitious townfolk, who think she is a witch. Except for her brother, Laurel is alone and lonely. Then she encounters a stranger who has appeared mysteriously in the woods. He is mute and has only a note giivng his name and that he i...more

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Feb 22, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Cove, by Ron Rash, is very different from his previous book, Serena. While Serena was chock-filled with action and hell-and-damnation type characters, this book meanders more slowly. The title of the book refers to one of the lesser-used meanings of the word - a narrow gap or pass between hills or woods; a cave or cavern. The place where Laurel and her brother live is dark and eerie without much light, set in the deep forest of North Carolina where once the Carolina Parakeet found its home....more The Cove, by Ron Rash, is very different from his previous book, Serena. While Serena was chock-filled with action and hell-and-damnation type characters, this book meanders more slowly. The title of the book refers to one of the lesser-used meanings of the word - a narrow gap or pass between hills or woods; a cave or cavern. The place where Laurel and her brother live is dark and eerie without much light, set in the deep forest of North Carolina where once the Carolina Parakeet found its home. "Nothing but shadow land, her mother had told Laurel, and claimed there wasn't a gloamier place in the whole Blue Ridge. A cursed place as well, most people in the county believed, cursed long before Laurel's father bought the land." "Worst of all was the cabin. No matter the time of day or season or how many lamps were lit, it remained a dank dim place that, as long as Laurel could remember, always smelled of suffering." Oftentimes, people in town go out to the cove and hang glass bottles or pieces of glass from a tree to warn others that this place is cursed. Laurel believes that she's made it through life because she has Hank alongside of her. Still, she is hoping for her real life to begin, something different to happen.

Laurel was a good student who her teacher thought would make a good teacher. Whenever Laurel gets a chance she reads the seventh grade books that her teacher let her take with her when she left school. However, Laurel had to drop out of school because of the way her classmates treated her. When a classmate of hers comes down with polio, the other students and their parents blame Laurel for that, thinking that she had cursed the girl.

The people of Mars Hill in Madison County think the cove brings bad luck. Moreover, they avoid Laurel because she has a birthmark on her shoulder which they think is a sign that she is a witch. When people in her community pass her on the street they cross to the other side. Sometimes they spit at her or throw eggs. Laurel has led a very lonely existence. When Laurel was in school, after her parents had died, "her classmates echoed what their parents believed - that her father's heart gave out after rocking Laurel with her birthmark touching his chest, that her mother's poisoned limb had turned the color of Laurels stained skin, that the cove itself had marked Laurel as its own." Hank has just returned from WWI without one hand and he is trying to get their farm in working order. He intends to marry a local girl and wants to prove to her family that a man with one hand can take care of a family.

One day when Laurel is walking in the woods, she comes across a man playing the flute beautifully. She stops to listen. Every day she checks to see if he is still there. At first she is suspicious of him, thinking that he is a robber or a tramp. One day, however, she sees that he is half-dead from bee or wasp stings all over his body. She takes him to her cabin that she shares with Hank and nurses him back to health. His name is Walter and he is mute and illiterate. Laurel takes an immediate attraction to him and sees him as a way out of her loneliness. What she doesn't know is that he carries a dark secret that comes to the surface gradually. Walter thinks about a trip he took on a boat to get to the cove. "A music he'd never heard before rose from the stream. The notes had colors as well as sounds, bright threads woven into the water's flow. Some of that bright water splashed up on the bank. It was green and shimmering and he scooped it up into his palm and it became a feather." Where did Walter come from and what is he doing at the cove?

There are few main characters in the book; Laurel and Hank and Hank's friend Slidell who helps Hank with the farm work once a week. In town, there is a military recruiter named Chauncey Feith, who is an arrogant, vain and dangerous man. He has the idea that anyone who speaks German is a 'Hun' and he goes after the professor of languages at the local college. He also has it in for the librarian because she has German books in the library. He is the book's 'bad guy'. The characters are pretty transparently good or bad.

Rash tries to use the language of the people which at times is awkward and inconsistent. For example, Laurel says of Walter, "Not being able to talk, that's got to be burdensome too. I'd think it could make you feel a lavish of aloneness." "I want to teach him to read and write, Laurel said. That might confidence him more." While this type of language seems to go with the setting, Mr. Rash does not use it consistently throughout the book which I wondered about. I think the book would have been stronger with more consistency.

The descriptions of the land are wonderful and breath-takingly beautiful. Mr. Rash has a way with words that brings you to the land and environment as if you were actually there. I enjoyed this book and read it quickly. It actually could be a long novella. The book is laid out with about 45 blank pages out of this 255 page book. It appears that these pages are filler. I have purchased Mr. Rash's other books and look forward to reading them. He has a gift that speaks to me, one that is rare and unique.
(less)

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Jun 15, 2012 Carrie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I felt like I was reading a short story rather than a full length novel but that could be because I couldn't stop reading once I started. That, in and of itself, is a bit of an oddity because this book is definitely not a seat of your pants type thriller. On the contrary, Rash takes you on a leisurely journey back to a time when America is at war with Germany and the ripple effects are felt all the way to even the smallest of towns.

Laurel and Hank Shelton, siblings, have experienced some of t...more

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About Ron Rash

Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Finalist and New York Times bestselling novel, Serena, in addition to three other prizewinning novels, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; three collections of poems; and four collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other St...more

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Quotes from The Cove

“Maybe calling it being hitched ain’t the prettiest way to say you’re married, but it’s the truth to my mind and true in a good way, because you’re working together and depending on each other, and you’re sharing the load.” — 3 people liked it

“Superstitions are just coincidence or ignorance.” — 2 people liked it

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The Cove

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