A Single Green Feather
Ron Rash weaves a haunting tale of obsession, preservation, and the dark lengths some will go to possess beauty.
Brody Atwell’s fascination with Carolina Parakeets began in the ninth grade. Mrs. Jenkins had shown them a painting of a bird he’d thought existed only in jungles or on pirate ships. They were here, in these mountains, she’d told the class. Scientists say they are extinct, but I hope they are wrong. Brody hoped so too.
Whenever outdoors, he was watchful. A flash of bright feather brought a moment of possibility, only to reveal a bunting or goldfinch. His interest in all birds grew. At NC State Brody majored in biology before returning to Enka to teach high school. His interest in the parakeet remained, evidenced by the Audubon print hung on his classroom’s wall.
Although there had been reported sightings as late as the 1920s, the last confirmed Carolina Parakeet died in 1916 at the St. Louis Zoo. Fifty-three years. Yet there was so much wilderness left in these mountains, miles and miles of national parkland and large individual holdings. Several students had relatives who swore they’d recently seen panthers, though biologists claimed the big cats had also been absent for decades. Brody wanted to believe, even as astronauts gazed down on earth, recently left their footprints on the moon, that the world yet concealed some secrets. However, science demands evidence, his professor, Dr. Willard, had said, declaring that the Ivorybill Woodpecker and the Carolina Parakeet were extinct until proven otherwise. Unlike Saint Paul, the professor had continued, we cannot believe in things unseen. Now, on a Thursday morning before homeroom, Brody remembered these words as he stared at the green feather laid on his desk.
“It looks like it could of come off one of them parakeets,” Lester said, nodding at the Audubon print.
With many students, Brody would have thought it no more than some high-school prank, a dyed feather pulled off a souvenir from a Cherokee or Boone tourist trap, but though Lester was more interested in hunting and fishing than schoolwork, he was a quiet, respectful boy. Brody picked up the feather. Holding it by the quill, he moistened his free hand’s thumb and forefinger, rubbed the inner vane. No dye smudged his skin.
“What do you think, Mr. Atwell?” Lester asked.
“It’s not a bunting,” Brody said, turning the feather slowly, inspecting it with a jeweler’s attentiveness. The tinge of yellow on the outer vane was significant. Lester’s family had lived in the county for generations, so it could be an heirloom passed down from an older relative, or perhaps detached from a grandmother’s once-fashionable hat. However, as Brody brushed a finger across the feather, he found it not brittle with age but soft and pliable.
“Where did it come from?”
“In a creek I was fishing.”
“A creek?”
“Yes sir.”
“Where?”
“You know that limestone outcrop the old folks call White Cloud?”
Brody nodded, raised his eyes to meet Lester’s.
“You were on Mr. Roderick’s property?”
“No sir, just below on state parkland,” Lester said. “It could have washed down the creek from Mr. Roderick’s property, but I wasn’t about to go and find out. My uncle went sang hunting up there and got a gun beaded on him and a hundred dollar fine for trespassing. Still, with all the land and hardly a soul up there, it’d be the kind of place to find one.”
“Five decades ago, it might have,” Brody replied, “but now, I’d say this feather is off a parrot or parakeet, living or dead, from Central or South America.”
“I guess so,” Lester said, as the first homeroom bell rang, “but that creek’s a strange place for any such feather to end up.”
“If you let me hold on to it, maybe I can figure out exactly what species it is.”
“Sure, but you don’t need to give it back,” Lester said, as students began entering the classroom. “I don’t have no use of it.”
Until their breakup a month ago, he and Laurel Keefer, a science teacher at the junior high, would have had dinner together, but tonight Brody ate alone. Afterward, he set the feather on the kitchen table. Years earlier he’d found a tome titled Indigenous Parrots of the Americas in a second-hand bookstore. He took it off his bookshelf and set it beside the feather. As he turned the pages, read the descriptions and observed the color plates, he kept expecting a match in size and coloration. Some were close, but none exactly. And there was something else. Rereading the pages on the Carolina Parakeet, he was reminded that the birds did not migrate. With food and water present, they’d have no reason to leave. If a small flock survived, the Roderick Estate’s twenty-thousand acres would be the perfect place. Though untended now, there were orchards and grape arbors. With hardly anyone up there for decades, the birds would be safe and, unlike in a park with trails and campsites, possibly unnoticed.
Nevertheless, there could be another explanation. William Roderick was a collector of rare objects. The bright-green feather of an extinct species would match that requirement, but how to explain the feather’s condition? Even protected by glass, wouldn’t it become stiff and brittle. Brody reminded himself he could still be wrong about the species. As an ornithologist, Professor Willard would know for certain, but he was in Raleigh, four hours away. No, Brody decided, he would try to see William Roderick first, a man nearly as elusive as the bird Brody sought.
Three years earlier, Life magazine had done an article on reclusive millionaires. Although Howard Hughes was the most prominent example, William Roderick’s life was also detailed. He had grown up in a family that rivaled the Vanderbilts in wealth and prestige. An only child, he’d graduated from Phillips Exeter, afterward studied art history at the Sorbonne before returning to New York. Society columns mentioned Roderick’s presence at galas and soirees, but after his parents died and the family fortune became his, William Roderick was rarely seen except at art auctions. He began spending entire summers alone at his family’s summer estate in the North Carolina mountains. At auctions, Roderick was competitive, even combative, and rarely outbid. Paintings by Renoir, Monet, and Chagall came into his possession. Once acquired, he refused to loan any of them to museums, including the Metropolitan. When a dealer visited Roderick’s Manhattan brownstone, she mentioned her surprise that none of his most-prized paintings hung on the walls. That would only diminish them, Roderick answered. Then, not yet thirty, the summer ended and he did not return to New York. He sold the brownstone and shipped his possessions to North Carolina, where he had remained in his family’s manor for the last forty-six years. Though the estate had once employed stable hands and gardeners, various servants and kitchen help, today William Roderick lived alone except for a married couple who maintained the house.
Now, on this late-morning Saturday, the green feather pocketed inside a wooden pencil box, Brody thought about how the article had concluded with the journalist’s last attempt to interview his subject. After unanswered letters and telegrams, the reporter had driven to the Roderick Estate only to be blocked first by a metal gate and then, attempting to walk up the drive, by a surly caretaker with a pistol in his hand. As Brody’s Volkswagen turned onto the property, he found himself blocked by the same metal gate.
Blowing his car horn would be obnoxious, so Brody cut the engine and got out. He cupped his hands and shouted a hello toward the house, then a second and a third before the caretaker came down the long drive that led to the manor. Brody had seen the man in town occasionally, where he was known to be as tight-lipped as his employer. Despite his gray hair, the caretaker’s long stride and tanned arms and face suggested a younger man’s vitality. He wore boots and overalls, a pistol holstered to his belt.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“My name’s Atwell. I teach biology at the high school,” Brody said. “I need to speak to Mr. Roderick. It’ll take just a minute.”
“Mr. Roderick don’t allow visitors,” the caretaker answered tersely.
“It’s about a green feather a student brought me,” Brody said, his words quickening, “one that likely came from his property.”
“If that student of yours was up here trespassing…”
“No sir, not at all. The feather was washed downstream onto parkland,” Brody explained, nodding west toward White Cloud Rock “The reason I need to see Mr. Roderick concerns the bird it might have come off of.”
“If it is a Carolina Parakeet feather, and I don’t understand why it’s here, Mr. Roderick will need more than you and a gate. Bird watchers will be all over his property.”
“What sort of bird?”
Brody hesitated.
“A Carolina Parakeet. It’s supposed to be extinct but I’m thinking, possibly, it might not be.”
“I tromp these hills and woods all the time and the only green bird up here’s a bunting,” the caretaker said, his gaze shifting down and to the side, as Brody had seen guilty students do when fabricating a lie.
“It’s not a bunting,” Brody said, watching the caretaker closely. “Mr. Roderick could know something, maybe explain where the feather came from.”
“I done told you there ain’t no bird like that up here. You had best forget such nonsense.”
“You may regret not telling him why I’ve come,” Brody answered sharply. “Like I’ve already said, he may know where the feather came from and why it looks so recent. I could be doing him a big favor, because the next person to see it will be an ornithologist in Raleigh. If it is a Carolina Parakeet feather, and I don’t understand why it’s here, Mr. Roderick will need more than you and a gate. Bird watchers will be all over his property.”
“You’d be fool enough to do that?” the caretaker asked, then grimaced when Brody nodded.
“Stay here,” the caretaker said and walked back up the drive. As he waited, Brody wondered if Roderick would turn him away. If so, he could dial information and find Professor Willard’s listing in the Raleigh phonebook. It was a bright, early fall day, perfect for a drive. He could be back by late evening.
The caretaker returned, unlocked the gate, and swung it open.
“Mr. Roderick said he’d see you.”
After passing through, Brody glanced in his rearview mirror to see the caretaker lock the gate behind him. He felt a moment of unease before returning his gaze to the winding drive. The farther up he went, the more he saw how the estate had fallen into disuse. Stables and fences rotted, orchards and arbors weed-choked. A netless tennis court and an empty swimming pool. The road leveled and he passed the caretaker’s cottage, a battered Ford truck beside it. The manor appeared. Unlike the grounds, it had been maintained. No peeling paint, rust-pocked roof, or loose drainpipes. It struck Brody that as William Roderick had once abandoned Paris and New York, he had now abandoned his family’s estate, shrinking his world to a single dwelling.
He parked in a cul-de-sac, got out, and crossed the yard. As Brody stepped onto the veranda, the housekeeper opened the door. Like her husband, she was plainly dressed--wrinkled muslin dress, black ankle boots, hair cinched in a braided bun. She did not smile or greet him, instead stepped back. Brody entered the parlor. After the brightness of the late-morning sky, his eyes slowly adjusted to the muted light. He was surprised by the sparse furnishings. No paintings on the walls, no busts or vases on pedestals, and something else, he now realized…not a single chair.
“Library’s the last room that way,” the housekeeper said, nodding to the right. “You wait there.”
As he walked down the wide hallway, his echoing footsteps bade long silences. Brody entered the library. Velvet curtains cloaked the windows, the only light two table lamps. This room also was hushed. No clock ticked. A grand piano occupied the room’s center, but its fallboard and lid were shut. The contents of the massive bookshelf looked long undisturbed. At the back of the room was a stone fireplace, above the mantle a portrait of a man and woman seated in adjoining chairs. Brody stepped closer, wondering if the portrait was by a famous painter.
“Are you a connoisseur of art, Mr. Atwell?” a voice said behind him.
“Folks claim all manner of things, Mr. Atwell. Louisianans ‘see’ Ivorybill Woodpeckers to this day, but like the parakeets, not one’s been brought forth as proof.”
The man’s clothing was what Brody noticed first. He’d expected something like a smoking jacket and cravat, not khakis, flannel shirt, and scuffed work boots. All implied a man who spent a lot of time outdoors, yet William Rodrick’s face was so exceedingly pale Brody could easily believe the man had not left the house in years.
“If you are,” Roderick continued as he entered the library, “you will agree with me that my great-grandparents appear not alive but embalmed. They thought the portrait marvelous. Nevertheless, it is a reminder that their wealth allows me the freedom to develop a more sublime sensibility.”
“To be honest, I know very little about art,” Brody said. “I’m a high school biology teacher.”
“Yes, so you are someone who needs and seeks the company of others,” Roderick said. Though they were side by side, his host’s eyes remained on the painting. Brody’s attempt at a handshake was ignored. “I am just the opposite. I ask nothing of others but to be left alone, though people such as yourself would deny me that.”
“I apologize, but thought it important,” Brody replied. “I have a feather, likely from your property, that could be from a Carolina Parakeet, and I thought…”
“The last Carolina Parakeet died in the St. Louis Zoo in 1916.”
“That’s something a lot of people would not know,” Brody said, the room’s expansiveness suddenly seeming to narrow. “Nevertheless, people claimed to have seen them here as late as the 1920s.”
“Folks claim all manner of things, Mr. Atwell. Louisianans ‘see’ Ivorybill Woodpeckers to this day, but like the parakeets, not one’s been brought forth as proof.”
“Birds seem a particular interest of yours.”
“Interest,” Roderick answered. “Anything rare and beautiful is so much more. That is what I as a collector seek. Show me this feather so we can clear up this matter; then you can return to pithing frogs and I to my interests.”
Brody opened the wooden pencil box, pulled out the feather, and handed it to Roderick. He stepped close to the nearest lamp, held the feather beneath the bulb only a moment before shaking his head and stepping back.
“There are a number of parrot species that will match this feather, and unlike the Carolina Parakeet, they are not extinct.”
“But can you name a specific one, Mr. Roderick,” Brody responded, “and even if it’s another species, where would it come from?”
“Perhaps an escaped pet,” his host answered. “I hope you haven’t made a laughingstock of yourself by telling people that this is a Carolina Parakeet feather.”
“Not yet. I want to be certain.”
“You need to keep it that way. If people start trespassing on my property, as Willis said you threatened, I’ll file a lawsuit against you. I’ll get you fired from your teaching job. Do you understand?”
“I understand your wanting privacy,” Brody answered, “and that’s why I came to you first, to find out what you might know.”
“That I can appreciate,” Roderick said, less stridently, “and so we’ll agree to stop this nonsense and part amicably.”
“All right, I’ll leave now,” Brody said, offering his palm.
“I would like to keep it,” Roderick said. “If I do find its origin is somehow from my property, I can let you know. Willis may have an idea.”
“No sir, I’m taking it to a former professor of mine. He’s an ornithologist and can confirm the exact species,” Brody said, meeting Roderick’s eyes. “That should not trouble you since you’re certain it isn’t a Carolina Parakeet.”
“Please take my word as a gentleman that I know what is best for the both of us, Mr. Atwell.”
“The feather,” Brody said, palm still proffered.
Roderick raised his free hand to his temple. Eyes closed, he held it there as if listening to some inner voice. When he lowered the hand, Brody knew something had been decided.
“I can’t allow you to involve more people in this matter,” Roderick said. “The feather’s source is more complex than you or your professor can imagine.”
“You’re admitting it is a Carolina Parakeet feather?”
“Admitting sounds as if we are in a court of law,” Roderick answered, and pointed at the two leather chairs, a mahogany coffee table between them. “Please sit down and you will have your answers.”
“Don’t you see,” Brody said, ignoring his host’s upraised hand. “They could still be up here. If so, they could repopulate. You must let some people, knowledgeable people, search your land.”
“First the feather,” Brody said.
This time it was given. Brody placed the feather back in the pencil box and the two men sat down.
“First, you need to understand a collector’s philosophy,” Roderick said. “If you indulge me, I will explain.”
“I’m listening,” Brody answered.
“What makes a work of art valuable is its rarity, but rarity has two levels. The first is inherent in an artist’s work. When you look at an actual Rembrandt or a Monet, not a copy or photograph, you see the brushstrokes that have summoned a vision no other human is capable of. However, though the artist’s creation is rare, its perceivers are not. Any oaf can go to the Vatican and gawk at the Sistine Chapel. What most people do not comprehend is that every set of upraised eyes diminishes the creation’s singularity, which is the essence of its beauty. What has value for a serious collector is what cannot be shared, which is the greater rarity. Had I been the Pope, the moment Michelangelo finished I would have banned all but myself from entering the chapel.”
Roderick paused.
“I sense you, as a man of science, would prefer more matter and less art, correct?”
“My field is science, not art, but I can’t imagine anything more beautiful than a Carolina Parakeet.”
Roderick’s head tilted slightly, observing Brody more closely.
“Well stated,” he said, and for the first time without condescension. “So, Carolina Parakeets. You are correct as far as their being on this land. In 1922, a small flock appeared in one of the orchards. I knew they were almost extinct, so Willis and I waited until nightfall and netted as many as possible. Irreverent as it was, we had no choice but to keep them in an empty chicken house. Then I realized a place worthy of them, large enough to outdo any man-made aviary. The feather in your hand comes from there.”
“How many parakeets did you capture?”
“Seventeen.”
“How long did those you captured live?”
“The last died in 1947.”
“But this feather doesn’t look twenty-two years-old,” Brody said, his voice and heart quickening. “Maybe the parakeets you didn’t capture stayed up here and reproduced. Your orchards would offer sufficient food, and with so much acreage most anything could stay hidden. Don’t you see,” Brody said, ignoring his host’s upraised hand. “They could still be up here. If so, they could repopulate. You must let some people, knowledgeable people, search your land.”
“You are wrong, Mr. Atwell,” Roderick sighed after a few moments. “There is no flock on my land. I will show you why the feather appears to be more recent, though not before my mid-morning coffee, and a cup for you of course.”
“I really don’t…”
“As your host I insist,” Roderick replied. “Cream or sugar, both?”
“I want to see this aviary now,” Brody insisted. “You can’t imagine what this means to me.”
“You’ve disrupted my morning routine enough,” Roderick scolded. “I will have my coffee and you will have the good manners to join me. Cream, sugar?”
“Both, I suppose.”
After his host left the room, Brody tried to make sense of all he’d been told. One thing, though, was certain: whatever else Roderick revealed, it was Brody who possessed the feather. And if there were no live parakeets, that could be even better. The feather would prove the bird’s demise decades later than previously believed. The Museum of Natural History, universities such as Cornell, individual collectors, all would want the feather, his feather, but Brody would keep it for himself, preserve it behind glass as one might the rarest butterfly. Or if the offer were high enough…As for Lester, Brody could wait a few months and simply say this was a different green feather.
Then, yet another thought came. If the aviary had somehow preserved the feather, as Roderick claimed, why was it found somewhere else? Had Lester, afraid he’d get in trouble, lied about where it came from? All seemed possible as his host returned, set a small silver tray on the table between them.
“Mrs. Willis was upstairs, so please forgive the informality,” Roderick said, handing Brody his cup. “The coffee beans are from Fazenda Mariano, whose acreage, unlike here, is inhabited by parakeets.”
As he sipped, Brody found the coffee oversweet but otherwise little different than a grocery brand. Roderick did not speak again or otherwise acknowledge Brody, making clear he wished to savor his coffee in silence. After several minutes it was as if Roderick had forgotten his guest’s presence. Brody set his empty cup on the tray.
“This aviary, you mentioned that it isn’t man-made.”
Unable to see his feet, Brody placed his right hand on the earthen wall for balance. He’d never thought of himself as claustrophobic, but nausea unsettled his stomach.
“That is correct,” Roderick replied.
“You say this will explain why the feather is so well preserved, but will it also explain why the feather was found outside this enclosure?”
Roderick raised his cup, drank what coffee remained, and set it on the tray.
“You are an impatient man, Mr. Atwell,” Roderick answered, and stood.
They went down the hall and through the parlor. Stepping off the veranda, Brody saw Willis standing beside the Volkswagen. He looked their way but did not speak.
“This way,” Roderick told Brody.
They followed a path into the woods. The trees thickened and the land sloped, then leveled. Soon Brody saw they were headed toward White Cloud Rock and the state park land. The trail narrowed and they went single file. Brody found himself listening intently to the surrounding woods but heard no bird call, only the chiding of a gray squirrel. They were almost at the outcrop’s base when a curtain of river cane blocked their way.
“A bit of camouflage,” Roderick said. “A hunter wandered up here years ago. Fortunately, Willis caught him before he could break the lock and get in. Through here,” he said, pointing to a gap so small they had to enter edge-wise.
Roderick led him to what resembled an entrance to a mineshaft. The wooden frame was made of boards thick as railroad ties, inside the scaffolding a metal door. Roderick took a key from his pocket and freed the padlock. He opened the door, reached down, and picked up a long-handled chrome flashlight.
“The ceiling is low so watch your head,” Roderick said as the flashlight’s beam swayed and darted before them. Unable to see his feet, Brody placed his right hand on the earthen wall for balance. He’d never thought of himself as claustrophobic, but nausea unsettled his stomach. The tunnel curved left, then straightened. Instead of earth Brody now felt limestone. In a few more yards the tunnel widened and the cloaked air dissipated.
Roderick stepped forward, his flashlight raking over a limestone floor before pausing to reveal a battery-operated railroad lamp tilted upward. At the turn of a switch, the beam revealed the cavern’s high ceiling.
“Stay here until the oil lamps are lit,” Roderick said, taking a box of matches from his pocket.
He began moving around the cavern’s circular wall. Shelves had been nailed into the limestone, the lamps set upon them. With each flame, more of the cavern revealed itself, including a stream that flowed across the cavern floor before disappearing into a seam in the rock. Nearer the cavern’s center, another struck match revealed a wooden armchair, a lamp on each side that faced the last unlit wall where Roderick stood unseen.
“Sit in the chair,” Roderick said. “It offers the proper perspective.”
Brody did so, as much out of need as to accept his host’s command. The nausea had increased and he’d begun to shiver. A stomach virus had been going around at school, but this was different.
“I’m not feeling very well,” Brody said as he sat down.
“No matter, Mr. Atwell. Your quest is at an end,” Roderick said, and lit the next lamp.
First Brody saw the colors: yellow and orange and green, then the long tail and pale beak. Roderick stepped around the metal rookery that resembled a playground’s jungle gym, lit the last lamp. The parakeet was fully visible now, as was the whole room. The creature appeared the work of a gifted taxidermist, until Roderick reached into his front pocket, stepped closer, and held out his cupped palm. The bird’s head dipped and rose as if bowing.
“They have a particular fondness for sunflower seeds,” Roderick said as the bird ate the last one, drank from the metal cup affixed to its perch.
Brody was shivering now, sweat beading his forehead. The cavern seemed to have brightened around him, as high fever had done in his childhood.
“You told me,” Brody said, one hand on his stomach, “that the flock had died.”
“They did,” Roderick said, coming over to stand beside the chair. “They left fifteen hatchlings. Perhaps it is the lack of sunlight or the moisture, but each generation had fewer offspring. This bird is the last.”
”When someone asked why he killed the Ivorybill, the judge said he wanted to prove it existed. I, on the other hand, have chosen to do the opposite, at all costs. I hope you can respect that.”
“But the feather,” Brody said, “it wasn’t in here.”
“No,” Roderick answered, and nodded at the stream. “The water flows through the outcrop and exits below the cliff. Likely other feathers have worked their way out before, but no one found them, or if so lacked your curiosity. Willis helped me with the initial architecture, but since then, until now, I’m the only person who has been in here. Think of it, Mr. Atwell, you are one of the last two people in the world who’s seen a live Carolina Parakeet. And the setting could not be more perfect,” Roderick added, lifting an upturned hand, “a cathedral.”
It did resemble one. The wide floor and high roof as well as the lamps’ soft light, the hushed silence. A place premised on the belief in resurrection, here realized, Brody thought. A stab of pain made him bend over, hands on his stomach.
“In those first years,” Roderick continued, seeming not to notice, “I could clap my hands and the flock would swirl around the roof. There’s a story about Michelangelo completing a sculpture and then attempting to destroy it because, as he said, ‘it doesn’t breathe.’ Had he seen those birds, their colors in motion, I think he would have been envious, don’t you? Alas, now there is only this one, the last of its kind in the world. I come here every day and sit for hours, contemplating that. With my Chagall and Renoir, I kept thinking of the previous owners, how so many other eyes--not only the owner’s eyes but those of their guests, their children, their servants--had gazed upon the paintings. I had dream after dream of their doing so. But this, this creature, exists only for me.” Roderick turned toward the parakeet. “Yet it is old, and seldom leaves the perch, more and more a still life. Soon it will die, I fear.”
“I’m very sick,” Brody said. He tried to rise but his arms were too weak. “Need a hospital.”
“I’m afraid it is too late for that, Mr. Atwell. Do you know how the last Ivorybill died?”
The room had begun to blur, the pain such that Brody could only shake his head.
“The landowner, a judge no less, shot it, and brought the bird into town for others to see. When someone asked why he killed the Ivorybill, the judge said he wanted to prove it existed. I, on the other hand, have chosen to do the opposite, at all costs. I hope you can respect that.”
“Help me,” Brody gasped.
“It’s almost over, Mr. Atwell, which is best for both of us. I grow jealous of your being here.”
“My car,” Brody gasped, “seen.”
“As you said, so much could be hidden up here,” Roderick answered, “and not only bodies.”
Roderick began snuffing the lamps. Soon all Brody could see was darkness, then not even that.
We have a fine selection of Ron Rash's novels, short stories, and poetry in our bookstore on Bookshop.org. We appreciate your business. Every purchase helps Salvation South, your local indie bookstore, and the author.
About the author
Ron Rash is the author of the PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling novel Serena, in addition to the critically acclaimed novels The Caretaker, The Risen, Above the Waterfall, The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; five collections of poems; and seven collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, Nothing Gold Can Stay, a New York Times bestseller, Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award, and In the Valley. Three times the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, his books have been translated into seventeen languages. He teaches at Western Carolina University.
- Ron Rashhttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/ron-rash/
