This image is the cover for the book Falls of the Wyona

Falls of the Wyona

A novel of male friendship and forbidden love in post-WWII Appalachia: “A pitch-perfect exploration of the terrors and pleasures of American adolescence.” —David Pratt, author of Bob the Book

In The Falls of the Wyona, four friends growing up on the banks of a wild Appalachian river just after World War II discover, almost at the same time, the dangerous, alluring Falls and the perils of their own maturing hearts.

Seen through the eyes of his best friend Arden, football hero Vince falls in love with the new kid, Glen. But they have no context for their feelings—and the next few years of high school become a tense, though sometimes funny, artifice of concealment.

The winner of Red Hen’s Quill Prize and an INDIES Silver Award for LGBTQ+ Fiction from Foreword Reviews, The Falls of the Wyona is a moving, powerful novel imbued with the magical atmosphere of Appalachian culture.

David Brendan Hopes

David Brendan Hopes, whose novel The Falls of the Wyona was chosen for Red Hen Press’s 2017 Quill Prose Award, is a poet, playwright, and painter living in Asheville, North Carolina. Originally from Ohio, Hopes taught at Hiram College, Syracuse University, Phillips Exeter Academy, and is now Professor of English at UNCA. His prize-winning plays have been produced in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Seattle, and London, and his publications have been in venues as diverse as Audubon, the New Yorker, and Best American Poetry, 2016.

Red Hen Press