Dunkard's HOLLOW

Deep in an isolated Appalachian hollow cleaved into ancient mountains by an unfettered river, a troubled girl and a devout Dunkard form a tenuous friendship. What begins as an interruption to the old man’s hermetic lifestyle and a challenge to his strict religious beliefs becomes a makeshift family. The Dunkard, Pearl, her son, and her autistic daughter forge hardscrabble lives that neither hard seasons nor lean times can imperil. Progress is another matter altogether—and when it threatens their homestead, the son faces an excruciating decision.

In this haunting story of sacrificial devotion and inescapable change, Dunkard’s Hollow brings to life the land-dependent people uprooted by progress. Set in Virginia’s highlands between the 1870s and 1939, the year the New River was dammed, the novel explores love and eternity—and the very human desire to find them both.