The Devil All the Time
Donald Ray Pollock may not be the most Appalachian of authors, coming from Ohio, but he has written one of the best Appalachian Gothic novels I've read. I had been seeing quite a bit of chatter online regarding the film based on the novel, so I decided to look into whether or not there was a book based on it, and discovered, to my delight, that there was. Upon first downloading Pollock's book, I got so caught up in the magic of language and story that I tore through my virtual copy in roughly 6 and a half hours. It was that good. I couldn't put it down. I started the night I had downloaded it and finished it the next day after taking a break--hey, a 9th grade English teacher needs her sleep. Pollock's novel spans a time frame from shortly after World War II up to the late 1960s, but there's nothing hip or cool about his characters. Upon returning home to Coal Creek, West Virginia, in the hills of Greenbier County, Willard Russell meets the woman of his dre