DALE NEAL
  • KINGS OF COWEETSEE
  • The Woman With The Stone Knife
  • Musings
  • About the writer
  • More Books
    • Appalachian Book of the Dead
    • The Half-Life of Home
    • Cow Across America
    • Behind the books
  • Contact

DALE  NEAL

 novelist, teacher, journalist, wanderer
Simply one of the most natural storytellers writing novels today.

Kevin McIlvoy, author of At the Gate of All Wonder and One Kind Favor



Getting sassy down in the Sandhills

6/22/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
The talented short story writer Ruth Moose has a nice review of "The Half-Life of Home" up at The Pilot website, the local newspaper down in the charming sandhills of Southern Pines. Thomas Wolfe got off the train here a time or two to mosey over to Weymouth House to write up part of his continuous welter of words. And poet/publisher Sam Ragan ran The Pilot for years, making sure that literature got its proper coverage with the local politics. 
    I'll be down there myself on Tuesday, June 25 for an afternoon reading at The Country Bookshop. 
     Here's what Ruth has to say:
              
     Dale Neal, who lives and writes in Asheville, wrote one of my favorite books, “Cow Across America” (Novello Press,Charlotte, comes up full swing again here with his new novel, “The Half Life of Home.”
     Royce Wilder has a house full of troubles what with the family acreage where Mama and Uncle Dallas still live, his wife, Eva, the practical one and an epitome of a teen age son, Dean. Smart mouth, full of sass and so real you want to smack the page.
     Wilder is the kind of guy who lives next door and somehow manages to step in cow pies even on city sidewalks, with old girl friends like Lucy Green and big money in his face, but when he goes to homecoming at Beverdam Baptist Church, Mama sets him back on the straight and narrow path.
    Then there’s the Witch Woman who decorates her cabin door with dried rattlesnake skins — still singing with all their buttons on. And Kyle the homeless waif who knows a secret he can’t ever tell.
    We are quickly caught up in their lives and a plot with an accordion fold that’s smooth and creamy as milk-cooked grits.
   Neal writes clear, honest prose, a rarity these days, and makes you care about his people, our landscape and where the world is fast going if we don’t keep an eye out.
    Trust me, you’ll like this one. And Dale Neal.


   Thanks, Ruth. 




0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Dale Neal

    Novelist, journalist, aficionado of all things Appalachian. 

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Archives

    May 2022
    October 2021
    May 2020
    March 2019
    November 2017
    April 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    August 2016
    March 2016
    January 2015
    August 2014
    July 2014
    March 2014
    September 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012

    Categories

    All
    Books
    Cherokee
    City Lights
    Counry Bookshop
    Darkness Visible
    Deliverance
    Faulkner
    Fred Chappell
    James Salter
    Malaprops
    McIntyre's Books
    Novel
    Pam Kelley
    Reading
    Ron Rash
    Solotaroff
    Styron
    Sylva
    The Next Big Thing
    Trails
    Walker Evans
    Wolfe
    Writing
    Writing Life

    RSS Feed

©  Dale Neal 2012. All rights reserved.
Asheville NC                                        Contact
  • KINGS OF COWEETSEE
  • The Woman With The Stone Knife
  • Musings
  • About the writer
  • More Books
    • Appalachian Book of the Dead
    • The Half-Life of Home
    • Cow Across America
    • Behind the books
  • Contact