Lick Creek

Proof copy. 8vo. 299pp. Pictorial wraps.

A 2001 Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Author's first novel. Set in the remote mining country of West Virginia in the late 1920's, the story of a fiery young woman, Emily Jenkins, and what happens when progress – and tragedy – comes to her family's farm. His subsequent novel, Birds in Fall (2006), a retelling of the Greek myth of the Halcyon days, won the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction. "A thrilling debut.... Kessler sets up this culture-class romance – and its cataclysmic consequences – expertly... an exquisite and affecting book." –Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times