Concord, Virginia
A Southern Town in Eleven Stories
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"In the places set between folds in the Earth, voices echo against mountains…"
So begins the story of Concord, Virginia, one of those places set between folds in the Earth. It's a place like almost any other Southern town, filled with self-righteous preachers, descendants of slaves, upstanding town leaders, and the ladies of the local bridge club. But Concord has something else: a dark heart. A church has been abandoned. Vultures have been roosting in the trees at George MacJenkins's house. Poisonous snakes follow Rachel Stetson into the river for a swim. And the ghost of Thomas Jefferson has recently spoken through a man chained to fate. Deftly spinning a web of stories from the voices of the town, Peter Neofotis creates a captivating portrait---comic, dramatic, bombastic, and tragic---of a place trapped in time and possessed by the valley landscape that surrounds it. In the tradition of great Southern gothic writing, Peter Neofotis brings to life the town of Concord, Virginia, allowing even the ancient voices there to swirl through the glazed brick streets like the Fork River. This collection of short stories is a pulse-raising debut by a writer who's created a place the reader will never forget.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This colorful debut collection consists of 11 interlinked stories set in a fictitious Shenandoah Valley town between the early 1950s and late '70s. The stories exhibit an Appalachian Gothic vibe, and their outlandish, often violent plots draw on the antics of the local eccentrics. The book kicks off with "The Vultures," in which George MacJenkins returns from vacation to find dozens of vultures have turned his home into their grotesque roost. Local reporter Rachel Stetson features in a couple stories, interviewing a religious snake handler in one, reporting on "the town fool" in the next. In "The Builders," Tom Dorian, an African-American carpenter married to a woman from a white trash family, is chained to a bridge by bigoted locals and has a very strange encounter with Mary Anne Randolph, "a haunted albino." Elsewhere, the 1968 trial of two gay men for sodomy in "The Botanist" offers a few humorous moments. Neofotis smartly captures a sometimes creepy, sometimes beautiful corner of Americana.
