Showing results for "The Rural" in Literature & Fiction

Wen Apollo dreams of seeing the world beyond the small riverside town where she grew up. But operating the local mailboat keeps her tethered to Coopersville. Islands dot the river, and their residents rely on her to deliver everything from food and medicine to pet food and plumbing supplies. On a raw spring day, Wen goes to Owl Island—the summer home of the illustrious Gage family—to deliver a package. It's addressed to the family's oldest daughter, Estelle, a woman Wen has long admired from afar.

Fran hates Ash Mountain, and she thought she’d escaped. But her father is ill and needs care. Her relationship is over and she hates her dead-end job in the city, anyway. She returns to her hometown to nurse her dying father, her distant teenage daughter in tow for the weekends. There, in the sleepy town of Ash Mountain, childhood memories prick at her fragile self-esteem, she falls in love for the first time and her demanding dad tests her patience, all in the unbearable heat of an Australian summer.

It's been five years since Bridget Theroux's death shocked the small town of Dalton, Maine, leaving behind husband Nate and daughter Sophie, now a vibrant young child. Nate doesn't always know how to answer her questions, but he is intent on raising her with joy—and shielding her from her grandmother, Annette, who remains dangerously locked away in her grief.

As a millworkers’ strike in the northern lumber town of Roberval drags on, tensions start to escalate between the workers—but when a lockout renews their solidarity, they rally around the mysterious and magnetic influence of Querelle, a dashing newcomer from Montreal. Strapping and unabashed, likeable but callow, by day he walks the picket lines and at night moves like a mythic Adonis through the ranks of young men who flock to his apartment for sex.

The emo kid, the loner, the cynical wallflower with an attitude. It's no secret that I've never quite fit in. But it's glaringly obvious now that I've moved to this Podunk small town that seems to run entirely on sugar, friendliness, and cheer. (And cows, an ungodly number of cows.) I hate it—this place where everyone knows everyone, and I'm still the outsider. Who wants to fit in anyway? I've never really tried, never even thought I wanted to…until I met him. Jimbob is living his best life out here, farming the fields of Kansas, well and truly happy. And I just don't get it.

Covenant continues the beloved saga of the residents of Jericho, a sleepy town in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, where life and love have as many twists and turns as a winding mountain road. Six weeks have passed since the fateful unfolding of events at the town fourth of July celebration. Questions swirl about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the town nemesis, Gerald Watson. Was it an accident, or was Watson murdered?

Blanche McCrary Boyd’s first novel in 20 years continues the story of her protagonist Ellen Burns. When Tomb of the Unknown Racist opens in 1999, Ellen - now sober, haunted by her activist past, her failed relationships - is taking care of her demented mother in South Carolina....

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, Trowbridge Vermont EMT Brighid Doran delivers the region’s ambulance to a three-alarm house fire. Afterward, she sits in a warm truck with her girlfriend Sam, a US Army officer fresh from the battlefields of Iraq, as they watch a local volunteer firefighter battle the blast in subzero weather.

Boston-born first-responder Alex Flynn gets called into the principal’s office in this short story set in rural Vermont, where poor roads and under-funded public services form a comfortable and familiar background. Explore the hidden links and community found in an ordinary New England town when local first responders might or might not have to engage with an active school shooter. Trowbridge Dispatch is part of the Trowbridge, Vermont series of novels and stories, wherein I.M. Aiken draws on her roots in public safety to narrate tales of the everyday heroes that every community depends on.