Gap Creek

There is a most unusual woman living in Gap Creek. Julie Harmon works hard, "hard as a man," they say, so hard that at times she's not sure she can stop. She is the one who has to be strong when first her brother and then her father die. People depend on her. They need her to slaughter the hogs and cut the wood. People are weak, and there is so much to do. Though she is just a teenager, she marries Hank and moves with him down from the high country to Gap Creek. There they discover that life grinds ever on without pause or concern for hard work. Scratching out an existence for themselves, always at risk of losing it all, Julie and Hank don't know what to fear the most -- floods or the flesh-and-blood grifters who insinuate themselves into their new lives. Their struggles with nature, with work, and with the disappointments and triumphs of marriage make this a powerful story. Robert Morgan was raised in the North Carolina mountains on land settled by his Welsh ancestors. An accomplished novelist and poet, he has won the James B. Hanes Poetry Prize, the North Carolina Award in Literature, and the Jacaranda Review Fiction Prize.