Clay's Quilt - by Silas House (Paperback)

About the Book

A motherless young man must stitch his life together among his relatives and other lively folks of Free Creek Kentucky.

Book Synopsis

In his New York Times bestselling debut novel, Silas House introduced himself as an important voice for Appalachia, and indeed, for the entire rural South. In Clay's Quilt, now a touchstone for his many fans, House takes us to Free Creek, Kentucky, where a motherless young man forges his path to adulthood, surrounded by ancient mountains and his blood relatives and adopted kin: his Aunt Easter tied to her faith and foreboding nature; his Uncle Paul, the quilter; the wild girls Evangeline and Alma; and a fiddler whose music calls to Clay's heart. As he struggles to stitch up the void created by his mother's death, Clay pieces together his own life's quilt, all masterfully wrought by House.

Blair brings this novel into a beautiful new paperback edition, along with two other Silas House novels, A Parchment of Leaves and The Coal Tattoo. The three novels, which share a common setting and some characters, are companion novels. They may be read individually, in any order, but collectively, they form a rich tableau of life in rural mountain Kentucky in the last century.

Review Quotes

"Silas House is one of my favorite writers." --Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

"Deftly written, replete with wisdom." --Publishers Weekly

"A lovely and accomplished literary debut." --Booklist

"House writes from deep within the culture and presents his world without apology or gloss." --Chris Offutt, Country Dark

"A long love poem to the hills...like the finely stitched quilts that Clay's Uncle Paul labors over, the author sews a flawless seam of folks who love their home and each other." --Southern Living

About the Author

Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, one book of creative nonfiction, and three plays. His writing has appeared frequently in the New York Times and has been published in Time, Newsday, Garden and Gun, Oxford American, and many other places. House is the winner of an E.B. White Award, the Nautilus Award, the Intellectual Freedom Prize from the National Council of Teachers of English, the Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library/NAV Foundation, and many other honors, as well as being long listed for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. He teaches at Berea College and in the Spalding University School of Writing.