84 pages
English language
Published Jan. 31, 1989 by Orchard Books.
Playwright and poet Jo Carson has long been mining the rich field of everyday life in her native Appalachia region and East Tennessee. Collecting found stories as part of her ongoing “People Pieces” series, she has created a remarkable distillation of the rhythms and nuances of a specific landscape that proves common to us all. These fifty-four monologues and dialogues are statements of life from the region of the heart.
“The pieces all come from people. I never sat my desk and made them up. I heard the heart of each of them somewhere. A grocery store line. A beauty shop. The emergency room. A neighbor across her clothesline to another neighbor. I am an eavesdropper and I practiced being invisible to get them.” – Jo Carson, from the Preface.
It reminded me a lot of home, which isn't Appalachia, but it's still rural and connected to those factory towns. It was quick to read, engaging, lovely. I really enjoyed it.
