Mountain Fever: Words from West Virginia

CHANGES IN THE WORLD around them, whether cultural or technology, do not destroy the vestiges of old Appalachia. Old Appalachia remains defiant, hilly and poor, but always unique. Amber D. Tran's Mountain Fever illustrates this portrait by revelation. Her short stories and her poetry sketch characters who love the hills and the forests, but also love their alcohol, now legal. But today's world in Appalachia includes other things as well. The drugs. The sexual appetites. The fights. And even their ATVs. The women and the men are ready to throw down, but in defense of something that has a shine; it is just buried, immersed in the poverty of the area and its lack of opportunity.Read Mountain Fever for the imagery in its stories of prose or poetry. Read it for its emotional impact, because those emotions that make us at once part of humanity and the animal world also bleed sympathy, acceptance, and humor.