Upheaval, Kentucky Voices

The acclaimed author of Hell and Ohio shares a story collection set in Eastern Kentucky “so visceral that you can almost feel the grit of coal dust” (Booklist).

Chris Holbrook burst onto the southern literary scene with Hell and Ohio: Stories of Southern Appalachia, stories that Robert Morgan described as “elegies for land and lives disappearing under mudslides from strip mines and new trailer parks and highways.” Now, with the publication of Upheaval, Holbrook more than answers the promise of that auspicious debut.

In eight interrelated stories set in Eastern Kentucky, Chris Holbrook captures a region and its people as they struggle in the face of poverty, isolation, change, and the devastation of land at the hands of the coal and timber industries. With a native’s ear for dialect and a gritty realism reminiscent of Larry Brown and Cormac McCarthy, the stories in Upheaval prove that Holbrook is not only a faithful chronicler and champion of Appalachia’s working poor but also one of the most gifted writers of his generation.