The Half-Life of Home

by Dale Neal

Standing your ground is hard when you can't trust what's underfoot. Sorting what's true and what's only wished is even harder in a place like Beaverdam, where stories sprout faster than grass on a new grave. Beaverdam's children heard tell of the Witch Woman who lived in a ruined cabin, who would cuss you or worse if you dared knock on her door. They were warned of the Snakebit Girl, how the rattler's fangs struck her pudgy hand reaching into the nest for the hen's eggs. Rather than tell a soul of her plight, she swelled with poisoned pride, and for her silence she was buried in the sloping graveyard. They knew of the Failed Farmer who lost all in the last depression of the nineteenth century. He sold off his plow horse, but still found necessity for the useless halter: his body was found hanging from a rafter in his empty barn. But the oldest story was of a curse that lay on the land itself. The first whites who crossed the gap encountered no Indians, but the occasional arrowhead could be unearthed in the black fields by the creek, once dammed by the creatures who lent the cove its name. Besides those napped flints, those first hunters had left behind a legend...

238 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2013

About the author

Dale Neal is the winner of the 2009 Novello Literary Award for his first novel, "Cow Across America."
He has an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College, and he has published his short stories and essays in Arts & Letters, Carolina Quarterly, Crescent Review, Marlboro Review and elswhere.
One of the last surviving American journalists, he lives and works in Asheville with his wife, Cynthia, a veterinary technician student. When he's not at work on the next novel, he can be found out hiking the Mountains-to-Sea Trail in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains with his pet Lab, Pearl.

Reviews

[Lewis Buzbee · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Standing your ground is hard when you can't trust what's underfoot. Sorting what's true and what's only wished is even harder in a place like Beaverdam, where stories sprout faster than grass on a new grave."

These are the opening lines to Dale Neal's new novel, The Half-Life of Home. Like the best novels, this is the story of the past colliding with the future, where the characters struggle to find some order in the inevitable chaos of change. If you love a good novel, you need this book.

The story is set in the deep woods of North Carolina, where the land, poisoned by those who've owned it, now threatens every one that's been left behind. But the land will prevail, as it always does. Along the way, readers will meet an unforgettable cast of characters, from Witch Woman to Snakebit Girl, and those modern demons, businessmen. This isn't just a great Southern novel, but a great American novel. And the writing, well, it's pitch perfect and absolutely seductive. You won't put it down; you won't forget it.

[Nan Cuba · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Half-Life of Home is half folk tale, half HBO series. Who could resist Appalachian legends about the Snakebit Girl, Shadow Man, and Witch Woman, along with intertwining stories that keep you riveted? There are multiple points of view, but the narrative voice is half hillbilly, half sophisticated intellectual, a mix as spellbinding as a snake charmer. Here’s a description of adolescence: “a hovering around the house, a hard yip always rising in the throat, something that had to be swallowed or shouted out.” Ultimately, this is a story about family and our primal connection to the land. There’s also corporate greed, homelessness, a predator priest, and tagger graffiti. Get a copy. Tune in.

[Dale Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Half-Life of Home,” set in 1992 in Beaverdam, N.C. Real estate appraiser Royce Wilder is struggling. He’s grown away from his wife and teenage son and is thinking about selling the family farm — no easy task for a man who collects antiques because it’s hard for him to forget the past. Against this backdrop, radon gas seems to permeate the ground of his ancestors along with a crazy woman neighbor.
The novel explores themes of family ties and secrets and the changing landscape of rural communities. Best-selling author Ron Rash says, “This profoundly moving, elegiac novel gives full voice to a lost place and, in its way, a lost culture. The ‘Half-Life of Home’ is a book readers will find hard to forget.”
Novelist Robert Morgan describes the story as one of “intense bonds of family and community in a time of wrenching change, environmental threat.” Morgan, author of “The Road From Gap Creek,” says, “Told in a voice both authentic and enthralling, with vivid and knowing detail, the novel is part lament, part celebration, by turns painful and inspiring, and real as the morning sun.”
“This novel will stay with me,” writes author Gail Godwin of “A Southern Family. “It gets into the inner workings—and shadows—of so many people, and ends up being the story not only of ‘the democracy of the dead’ but of a particular place ‘in a world that is never ending.’ ”

[Lucy Andrews-Cummin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in 'Altamont' North Carolina (Asheville) Neal tells the story of three generations (and a bit more) of a family long settled in Beaverdam, a town settled in the 19th century by Scots-Irish Baptists in a remote mountain valley that the native people avoided as unhealthy. Turns out, rightly. This family too has harbored some unhealthy secrets and in the way of things, all comes to the surface at once, large and small, to be reckoned with. What I love about Neal's novels is that he doesn't flinch from the gritty but neither does he take you down into the dark and leave you there. He's an accomplished storyteller and he knows to balance the good news with the bad and to show us, deftly and firmly, that while change is inevitable, not all is lost, and that there is often hidden gain. Maybe not for you, but at the deeper level, metaphysical or whatever you want to call it. An excellent novel and highly recommended. *****

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the first sentence, "Standing your ground is hard when you can't trust what's underfoot," to the last page this novel delivers a story of the shifting ground we all experience. Richly steeped in Appalachian traditions, it is powerful in both its specificity and its universality. Neal's memorable prose make each sentence something to breathe in and ponder.