Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley : Novellas and Stories

Ann Pancake's 2007 Novel Strange As This Weather Has Been Exposed The Devastating Fallout Of Mountaintop Removal Mining On A Single West Virginia Family. In Me And My Daddy Listen To Bob Marley, A Follow-up Collection Of Eleven Astonishing Novellas And Short Stories, Pancake Again Features Characters Who Are Intensely Connected To Their Land--sometimes Through Love, Sometimes Through Hate--and Who Experience Brokenness And Loss, Redemption And Revelation, Often Through Their Relationships To Places Under Siege. Retired Strip Miners Find Themselves Victimized By The Industry That Supported Them; A Family Breaks Down Along Generation Lines Over A Fracking Lease; Children Transcend Addict Parents And Adult Suicide; An Urban Woman Must Confront Her Skepticism About Worlds Behind This One When She Finds Bones Through A Mysterious Force She Can't Name. Me And My Daddy Listen To Bob Marley Explores Poverty, Class, Environmental Breakdown And Social Collapse While Also Affirming The World's Sacredness. Ann Pancake's Ear For The Appalachian Dialect Is Both Pitch-perfect And Respectful, That Of One Who Writes From The Heart Of This World. Her Firsthand Knowledge Of Her Rural Place And Her Exquisite Depictions Of The Intricacies Of Families May Remind One Of Alice Munro. In Such Light -- Mouseskull -- Arsonists -- Dog Song -- Coop -- The Following -- Said -- Sugar's Up -- Rockhounds -- Sab -- Me And My Daddy Listen To Bob Marley. Ann Pancake. On the heels of the popular and critical success of her 2007 novel Strange as This Weather Has Been , centered on mountaintop removal and its effect on a single family, Ann Pancake returns to her native West Virginia to tell stories of other folks caught at the same difficult interface. In Rockhounds, nine-year-old Joslyn must divide her sympathies between the old ways of her fossil-hunting grandfather and the scientific approach of his college educated son. It is her Uncle Derek whos stolen the body of their family dog to take to Charleston to prove the water in their creek has been poisoned. With perfectly poised equanimity,Jos witnesses both her grandfathers grief and her uncles rage at his parents for signing this leasing deal, done in part, simply to be neighborly. Ann Pancakes ear for dialect of these mountain people is perfect, her respect that of one who writes from the heart of this world. These are folks caught in the complexities of rural economies where there are no quick fixes to questions surrounding right livelihood. With first-hand knowledge of this world and her exquisite depictitions of its natural history she may put you in mind of Daniel Woodrell.