“The plot of Long Man—the search for a missing
girl—is compelling. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to view the novel as
simply a cinematic race against the clock. Greene has crafted a story that
forces us to examine our relationship with nature, our understanding of
community and, significantly, of social class. The residents of Yuneetah are
impoverished and poorly educated. Their daily lives are simple and hardworking.
In other words, they are just the kind of people our culture casts aside. This
novel, written during the years of a more recent economic crisis, lends this
Depression-era story a moral and ethical vibrancy that we should all pay
attention to.” —Jeffrey Condran, Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
“An unusually poetic literary
thriller—an Appalachian
version of The World Without
Us. Greene focuses this intense novel on one
mother who has refused to move [from] her 40 acres. That futile devotion to a hallowed place and a
primitive way of life provides the story’s mournful base melody . . . But soon
that fear of loss is submerged in a much deeper one: all the energy Annie put
into saving her farm immediately triples into finding her daughter. In these
searing pages, it’s impossible not to feel the anguish in this mother’s rage . .
. As the rain falls and the river rises, the
potential here for melodrama is high. But Greene is too fine a writer for that.
As she works in the stylistic territory of Bonnie Jo Campbell and Ron Rash, her
sentences seem to rise up from the soil of this harsh, beautiful land. She gives
voice to alluring characters, [and to] the aching desires of unsophisticated
people who possess a complex, profound understanding of themselves and their
doomed way of life. An engrossing blend of raw tension and gorgeous
reflection.” —Ron
Charles, The Washington
Post
“Set in 1936 as the Tennessee Valley
Authority floods a mountain valley to bring electricity to the region, a young
mother must confront leaving the place she knows and an uncertain future as her
family land slips beneath the new lake. When her 3-year-old daughter goes
missing, a divided community must come together and race the rising waters to
find the child before it’s too late. Greene is regarded as one of the best young
chroniclers of contemporary Appalachia . . . Long Man dramatizes historical events that are still
controversial today and raises issues that will resonate strongly with
contemporary mountain communities.” —Rich Rennicks,Mountain
Xpress
“Long Man reads like a painting—the kind that
unravels from a scroll, with a landscape that moves through space and time . . .
Greene masterfully captures the stories of [Yuneetah’s] holdouts, but even in
this desolate setting, there is still beauty that Greene, born and raised in
East Tennessee, evokes with the simplest strokes . . . Her prose is sinuous, but
clear, and completely devastating.” —Anna Lee, The Greenville
News
“An instant classic . . . A tour de force
of time and place, people and culture . . .Long Man is a visceral novel that evokes a sense of
time and place and of the people who both define and are defined by that
setting. Beautifully written in spare prose nevertheless creating a richly
textured narrative that lingers in the mind long after the last page is turned.”
—D. R. Meredith, New York Journal of
Books
“An eloquent and
powerful historical novel that explores timeless themes of greed and
displacement.” —Largehearted Boy
“Unemployment and rising water levels get
even worse in Depression-era Tennessee. Greene sets her novel during three days
of the summer of 1936, as the government plans to dam the state’s Long Man
River, bringing jobs and electricity to the region but also flooding the tiny
town of Yuneetah. Just when the town’s evacuating residents think they’ve hit
rock bottom, a 3-year-old child disappears. A tense tale of the sacrifices
people make in the name of progress.” —Billy Heller,New York
Post
“Richly told . . . As the crisis plays out, the complex web of
feeling among the characters is revealed—a mix of desire, grief, unexpressed
love, and longstanding resentment, all set against a collective grief created by
the looming man-made apocalypse. The story is genuinely thrilling, full of
tension and unexpected turns, but the true power of Long Man lies in Greene’s striking depictions of
people and place. The characters—old wise woman, grotesque outcast,
strong-willed farm wife, kindly sheriff—are types familiar from countless
stories of the rural South, but in Greene’s hands they become passionate,
vulnerable human beings buffeted by powers they can’t hope to oppose, much less
defeat. Greene’s gift for conveying a sense of the living environment these
people inhabit—an environment that has utterly shaped them and that is soon to
be erased forever—gives the story vibrant life. There’s nothing abstract about
the grief here. The characters are mourning the flesh and blood of their mother
ground. Long Man is ultimately a story about the powerful
robbing the powerless of something precious, but Greene’s approach is not
sentimental . . . The novel grapples with real questions about our relationship
to nature and the price of progress, even as it delivers a story as touching and
timeless as a folk tale.” —Maria Browning, Chapter16
“Taut, shimmering, dramatic . . . A
realistic, historically accurate portrait of a doomed community during the
summer of 1936—a story about a land grab of epic proportions [and] a handful of
characters facing the end of their 150-year-old way of life . . . But the real
story here is the clash between tradition and the sweeping changes that promise
a better life. The old ways, Greene tells us, can be both comfort and trap,
curse or blessing, and she looks at both sides with sensitivity and
understanding . . . In language as unadorned and
lovely as a country quilt, Greene invites the reader deeply into the seclusion
of the valley and the mountains above. A remarkable love letter to a forgotten
time and place . . .
Luminous.” —Gina Webb, The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
“This story of love, loyalty,
and often-complex relationships had us hooked from the first page to the
last.” —Patricia
Shannon, Southern
Living
“Haunting . . . Long Man revisits blue-collar Appalachia with the
same lyricism Greene brought to her magnificent first novel, Bloodroot . . . With searing eloquence, she seems to
channel the frustrations of generations of rural poor in this stark indictment
of a government hell-bent on destroying a long-standing community. Her stunning
insight into a proud and insular people is voiced with cold clarity and burning
anger.” —Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist (starred review)
“Exquisite . . . Greene’s prose is as
mesmerizing as the story she weaves. Readers will never forget this vividly
drawn landscape, the journeys of those who hold tight to this remarkable place
in America even as it disappears before their eyes. Long Man is a novel about redemption
and resurrection and love in all its forms. Its breathtaking suspense and images
will haunt me forever.” —Jill McCorkle, author of Life After
Life
“Harrowing, riveting . . . The Tennessee
Valley Authority was designed to help modernize the state during the Great
Depression, but [it] only spells destruction for the town of Yuneetah. Greene’s
excellent second novel focuses on the holdouts who refuse to leave, chief among
them a husband and wife [whose] 3-year-old daughter goes missing. The lead
suspect in her disappearance is a one-eyed Yuneetah native who’s spent much of
his life as a drifter connected to violent protests against [the] government.
Greene’s [prose] is sinuous and tonally mythic; Gracie’s disappearance,
alongside Amos’ cat-and-mouse game with authorities, gives the novel a welcome
propulsion. Long Man fully inhabits
the ironies inherent in destroying a place in the name of progress . . . A smart
and moody historical novel that evokes the best widescreen Southern literature.”
—Kirkus (starred
review)
“Unforgettable. Like a classical myth,
Greene’s second novel, set in the summer of 1936, transforms a period of
cataclysmic history into a gorgeous, tragic tale filled with heroes and heroines
. . . Greene’s enormous talent animates the voices and landscape of East
Tennessee so vividly, and creates such exquisite tension, that the reader is
left devastated.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Equal parts
mystery, family saga and backwoods romance, Long Man captures the collision of hardscrabble folk
with the unstoppable modern world. Amy Greene’s novel of the Tennessee Valley
Authority has a little bit of everything, and is always rich and absorbing.”
—Stewart O’Nan, author of A Prayer
for the Dying and Emily, Alone
“A gem. Long Man is so palpably real that I feel I’ve spent
the last few days actually living in Greene’s corner of Depression-era
Tennessee. Only a handful of writers can bring a place to life with this much
texture, and bring characters to life in such a visceral manner. These people
and this place will live on in my imagination for the rest of my life. Greene is
a special writer, andLong Man is
a special book—a beautiful piece of work. How I long for more novels like hers.”
—Steve Yarbrough, author of Prisoners of War and The Realm of Last
Chances
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