AS RAIN TURNS TO SNOW And Other Stories - by Robert Morgan

Publication Date: April 1, 2017
Perfectbound, 200 pages
ISBN 978-1-937968-29-8

Available from Small Press Distribution

Though Robert Morgan has for a long time now lived on the northernmost fringes of Appalachia in Ithaca, New York – like his fellow displaced Tarheel predecessor A. R. Ammons, he’s an English professor at Cornell – his heart and his pen (well, his keyboard more likely now) have ever belonged to his native North Carolina. In this latest collection of short stories, his clear-eyed affection for and deep knowledge of the people and places and lore and landscape of the region are again in evidence. The finely observed details that form the backdrop for the little dramas here are so deftly rendered, the language so natural, that it’s easy to overlook the artistry, the master touch, the brushstrokes too fine to notice. Simply life on a page.

But that’s merely the setting for another memorable cast of Morgan characters and situations, which here include a widower finding a new possibility of life (and sex) in a retirement community; a doctor who enlists his friends to catch his wife in flagrante delicto; an Episcopal priest surprised to find his pastoral duties include sheltering a group of nudists from a mob (this alone is worth the price of admission!); and many more.

It has become fashionable in today’s politics to parse the “real America” of Appalachia. Robert Morgan has always known the heartland folk, his people, warts and all. Reading these stories, their stories, though written as fiction, makes a better introduction than any stack of facts – alternative or not.

Critical Praise for Robert Morgan

"Morgan displays an impressive command of American history and of language in [his] stories.... Each tale embraces a strong, authentic voice; Morgan’s narrative range is remarkable."
—Publishers Weekly

"There’s a certain inevitability to Robert Morgan’s fiction, as if the people and situations he portrays are not so much written as hewn from blocks of Blue Ridge Mountain stone. Partly, that’s a function of landscape, which even more than language seems to motivate Morgan’s writing. At the same time, Morgan brings to his efforts a timeless sensibility, a perspective bound up less with fleeting fashions than the belief that there may be something universal about the human condition after all.… What’s remarkable...is not just the sweep and scope of Morgan’s stories, but his ability to write about individuals in a wide variety of circumstances."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Robert Morgan’s lyric mountain language is equal to the epic sweep of history, to the grandeur of the land itself."
—Lee Smith

Robert Morgan is the author of fourteen books of poetry, most recently Terroir, 2011, and a collection of new poems, Dark Energy, published in 2015. He has also published nine volumes of fiction, including Gap Creek, a New York Times bestseller. A sequel to Gap Creek, The Road From Gap Creek, was published in 2013 and received the 2014 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. A new novel, Chasing the North Star, was published in 2016. In addition he is the author of three nonfiction books, Good Measure: Essays, Interviews, and Notes on Poetry; Boone: A Biography; and the Westward Expansion, 2011. He has been awarded the James G. Hanes Poetry Prize by the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2013 he received the History Award Medal from the DAR. His first play “Homemade Yankees” was awarded the East Tennessee Civil War Alliance John Cullum Drama Prize. Recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Arts Council, and an O. Henry short story award, he has served as visiting writer at Davidson College, Furman, Duke, Appalachian State, and East Carolina universities. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, he was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2010. Born in Hendersonville, North Carolina in 1944, he has taught since 1971 at Cornell University, where he is Kappa Alpha Professor of English. Find more about him at www.robert-morgan.com.