One Foot in Eden
by Ron Rash
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In 1950's Appalachian South Carolina, sheriff William Alexander must solve the disappearance of Holland Winchester amid a backdrop of infidelity, jealousy, betrayal, and a valley filling with water behind a new dam.Tags
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Member Reviews
One of my favorite books that I keep reading again and again. I love it for the depth of the characters, the beautiful use of language, the tension between melancholy and redemption. Also, it's a first-rate Southern gothic mystery.
Billy and Amy Holcombe want a child badly even though months of trying have proved fruitless. Sheriff Alexander believes that a local mountain ruffian has been murdered however no body can be found.
This excellent example of Southern fiction and a tale of murder is told through a series of chapters, each one a different voice. One character that did not ha voice is the Appalachia setting. Ron Rash was so skilled in bring this northwestern South Carolina environs to life, I found myself walking its wooded hills and dales. This is my first Ron Rash novel read and it won't be my last.
This excellent example of Southern fiction and a tale of murder is told through a series of chapters, each one a different voice. One character that did not ha voice is the Appalachia setting. Ron Rash was so skilled in bring this northwestern South Carolina environs to life, I found myself walking its wooded hills and dales. This is my first Ron Rash novel read and it won't be my last.
Told in five voices, this novel of southern Appalachia is beautiful and violent and tragic. Holland Winchester is mean and makes enemies easily, but when Amy Holcomb uses him to father the child her husband cannot give her, his death is as ugly as the life he had led. Desperation leads Billy Holcomb to do things he never imagined himself capable of, and a sheriff who has experienced disappointment and loss of innocence in his own life knows there is more to the story than he's been told. Still, without a body there can be no arrest, but that doesn't absolve anyone of paying for the wrongs in their life. Engaging and well written, One Foot in Eden is difficult to put down.
98 Phenomenal
Ron Rash's first novel, and also probably his rawest, sets the tone for a manifestation of Appalachian literature that has become commonplace in the last decade. This narrative includes the dark histories and complex personal niches of a sheriff, farming couple, wayfaring son, and deputy as they all come to terms with their places in a community about to be buried. Rash goes beyond environmental questioning, however, tackling the intricate fears and insecurities associated with barrenness for women and the place of provision for the masculine mind. Certainly, the affirmed Appalachian tropes are present for all to marvel and chew on: the spinster widow witch up a dark, winding creek cove, the heartless modern apparatus show more represented by Carolina Power, or the subtle but omnipresent class tension between town sheriff and hill-dwelling land scraper. Still, the power of this book is its intimacy in exploring a landscape known for its mystery and a people that have been transformed into legend. It is a surpassingly dark and tragic novel, but it finds beauty in the small spaces where the narrative has room to breathe. Additionally, all the characters are so beautifully developed, the audience has a certain feast on what becomes a marquee of idyllic mountaineer irony. Rash has, with ONE FOOT IN EDEN composed a marvelous work, simple in structure but marvelous in its breadth.
Favorite quotes:
"I dreamed of water deep as time"-51
"But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don't need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life."-56
"There in that field with the dirt and dew cold on our skin me and billy clinged and shivered against one another like we was caught in a flood and holding on each other to keep from getting swept away." 74
"I watched the flickering yellow flames a long ime, thinking how when you looked at fire it was like looking at moving water, both ever changing and not changing all at the same time." 77-78
"We did other things, things I'd never have reckoned to have done with Billing even in the dark. It was like I was opening up more and more to him, showing him everything there was of me, our bodies swirled together like two creeks becoming one." 96
"A woman is never more pretty than when she's bathing or so it was when I looked at Amy. A man bathes just to get dirt off him but it seems more to a woman than that. Amy bathed in a slow, easeful way like the soap and water washed away every care the day had laid on her. Then she took the tin and sloshed water over her head and her yellow hair darkened to the color of honey." 116
"There's currents that run deep in a woman, too deep for a man to touch their bottom." 118
"If this ain't nothing but a dream I'm in it with you." 143
"It wasn't long before drops of rain tapped the roof and that's the best sound ever I've known to make a body drowsy." 154
"I knew the Bible claimed no soul for an animal but I wanted to believe part of Sam somehow lived on. If it wasn't a soul like a man's maybe it was some kind of happy lingering of what it had felt to rest easy in the barn after a hard day dragging the plow." 155
"I hadn't gotten away with nothing." 159
"I was learning that leaving a place wasn't as easy as packing up and getting out. You carried part of it with you, whether you wanted to or not." 170 show less
Ron Rash's first novel, and also probably his rawest, sets the tone for a manifestation of Appalachian literature that has become commonplace in the last decade. This narrative includes the dark histories and complex personal niches of a sheriff, farming couple, wayfaring son, and deputy as they all come to terms with their places in a community about to be buried. Rash goes beyond environmental questioning, however, tackling the intricate fears and insecurities associated with barrenness for women and the place of provision for the masculine mind. Certainly, the affirmed Appalachian tropes are present for all to marvel and chew on: the spinster widow witch up a dark, winding creek cove, the heartless modern apparatus show more represented by Carolina Power, or the subtle but omnipresent class tension between town sheriff and hill-dwelling land scraper. Still, the power of this book is its intimacy in exploring a landscape known for its mystery and a people that have been transformed into legend. It is a surpassingly dark and tragic novel, but it finds beauty in the small spaces where the narrative has room to breathe. Additionally, all the characters are so beautifully developed, the audience has a certain feast on what becomes a marquee of idyllic mountaineer irony. Rash has, with ONE FOOT IN EDEN composed a marvelous work, simple in structure but marvelous in its breadth.
Favorite quotes:
"I dreamed of water deep as time"-51
"But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don't need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life."-56
"There in that field with the dirt and dew cold on our skin me and billy clinged and shivered against one another like we was caught in a flood and holding on each other to keep from getting swept away." 74
"I watched the flickering yellow flames a long ime, thinking how when you looked at fire it was like looking at moving water, both ever changing and not changing all at the same time." 77-78
"We did other things, things I'd never have reckoned to have done with Billing even in the dark. It was like I was opening up more and more to him, showing him everything there was of me, our bodies swirled together like two creeks becoming one." 96
"A woman is never more pretty than when she's bathing or so it was when I looked at Amy. A man bathes just to get dirt off him but it seems more to a woman than that. Amy bathed in a slow, easeful way like the soap and water washed away every care the day had laid on her. Then she took the tin and sloshed water over her head and her yellow hair darkened to the color of honey." 116
"There's currents that run deep in a woman, too deep for a man to touch their bottom." 118
"If this ain't nothing but a dream I'm in it with you." 143
"It wasn't long before drops of rain tapped the roof and that's the best sound ever I've known to make a body drowsy." 154
"I knew the Bible claimed no soul for an animal but I wanted to believe part of Sam somehow lived on. If it wasn't a soul like a man's maybe it was some kind of happy lingering of what it had felt to rest easy in the barn after a hard day dragging the plow." 155
"I hadn't gotten away with nothing." 159
"I was learning that leaving a place wasn't as easy as packing up and getting out. You carried part of it with you, whether you wanted to or not." 170 show less
In his first novel, poet and short-story writer Ron Rash gives us a story set in the 1950s in the mountainous western region of South Carolina, and told from multiple points of view. Army vet and local troublemaker Holland Winchester is known for his drinking and frequent punch-ups and run-ins with the law. He is well known, in particular, to Sherriff Will Alexander. The Sherriff has no fondness for Holland, but when Holland goes missing and Mrs. Winchester claims that her son has been murdered, he investigates with all the energy and enthusiasm he can muster. Gradually it comes out that Holland has been engaged in a dalliance with Amy Holcombe, the sultry young wife of subsistence farmer and Holland’s next-door neighbour Billy show more Holcombe. This is enough to convince the Sherriff of Billy’s guilt, but where is the proof, and—more importantly—where is the body? The story that Ron Rash fashions from this premise is brief but proceeds at a measured pace, as Sherriff Alexander asks questions and pokes his nose into everybody’s business, trying to trip them up and find out what they know. The novel is constructed in five short sections, each with a different narrator—the Sherriff, Amy Holcombe, Billy Holcombe, their son, and the Deputy—each of whom elucidates events from his or her own unique perspective. Though sufficiently entertaining, the novel hardly qualifies for the label of murder mystery and doesn’t generate much in the way of suspense. Characterization is sketchy, and there is a straightforward simplicity and even obviousness to much of the action that is occasionally reminiscent of literature written for young adults. But at the same time this uncomplicated tale of otherwise good people caught in a web of deceit carries significant moral weight. Ron Rash’s characters speak and narrate their sections in the plain-spoken vernacular one would expect from folks living in a rural backwater who make a scant living off the land. Overall the prose is tightly controlled, rarely waxing poetic, though the author’s reverence for the natural world is clear. One Foot in Eden may seem, upon reflection, to be somewhat underdeveloped, like a study for a major work that was never completed. But Ron Rash’s fictional voice is distinctive and compelling, and his first novel is a worthy if minor addition to the literature of the Southern United States. show less
One Foot in Eden is Ron Rash’s first novel. The tale is told in five voices; the setting is the Jocassee Valley in the Appalachian Mountains of South Carolina in the 1950s. It starts out as a murder mystery, but soon becomes much more. Characters that start out as simple farmers and law enforcement officers develop an unexpected depth. Underneath the main story is the current of people’s lives and the threat of the dam that will flood the valley.Sherriff Will Alexander believes that local thug and war veteran Holland Winchester has been murdered, but he has no body. He suspects that Billy Holcombe has committed the crime but has no proof. The crime and its aftermath are described successively by Will Alexander, Billy Holcombe’s show more wife Amy, Billy, his son Isaac and Deputy Bobby Murphree. The plot twists in unpredictable ways: more than once, the outcome is quite different from what the reader might expect. It is obvious from the rich descriptions and authentic dialogue that Rash is a native Appalachian: his love of the place and the people stands out.This is a tale of murder; of suspicion and superstition; of guilt and of love; of infidelity and jealousy; of choosing a path in life; of fatherhood; of attachment to place and community displacement. Beautifully written, it is a pleasure to read and hard to put down. show less
This is one of a select number of books that I regularly recommend to students--even those who aren't big fans of reading. It moves quickly even though it's by no means a thriller or traditional mystery, and at the same time it's literary fiction that isn't really genre work (unless you'd call Southern Literature genre). You get the various perspectives of those main characters involved in the story, and the different voices come together wonderfully to keep you interested and engaged in what you're reading. Everything feels and sounds real, and the writing turns this into a truly touching story. I'd strongly recommend it to any mature reader.
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Le livre de poche (32043)
Gallimard, Folio (6623)
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- Canonical title
- One Foot in Eden
- Original title
- One Foot in Eden
- Original publication date
- 2002-10 (1e édition originale américaine, Picador) (1e édition originale américaine, Picador); 2009-08-25 (1e traduction et édition française, Editions du Masque) (1e traduction et édition française, Editions du Masque); 2011-01-05 (Réédition française, Le livre de poche, Librairie générale française) (Réédition française, Le livre de poche, Librairie générale française); 2019-03-21 (Réédition française, Folio, Gallimard) (Réédition française, Folio, Gallimard)
- People/Characters*
- Billy Holcombe (Le père); Amy Boone-Hocombe (L'épouse); Isaac Holcombe (Le fils); Will Alexander (Le shérif); Holland Winchester (L'ancien combattant de Corée disparu= (L'ancien combattant de Corée disparu=); La veuve Glendower (show all 11); Sarah Winchester (Mère de Holland); Travis Alexander (Frère du shérif); Janie Griffen (Epouse du Shérif); Le docteur Wilkins; Bobby Murphree (L'adjoint du shérif)
- Important places
- South Carolina, USA; Appalachian Mountains; Appalachia, USA
- Epigraph
- One foot in Eden still, I stand
And look across the other land.
The world's great day is growing late,
Yet strange these fields that we have planted
So long with crops of love and hate.
—Edwin Muir - Dedication
- For Bill Koon
- First words
- There had been trouble in the upper part of the county at a honky-tonk called The Borderline, and Bobby had come by the house because he didn't want to go up there alone.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)This was a place for the lost.
- Original language*
- Anglais (Etats-Unis) (Etats-Unis)
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- (4.04)
- Languages
- English, French, Italian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 10
- ASINs
- 4
