This Ditch-Walking Love

Winner of theTartt First Fiction Award.

THE DITCH-WALKING LOVE took shape in the Murphees Valley section of the Cumberland Plateau in central Alabama. Where I live, ridges lift above ravines the creeks and small rivers have cut into being. And if you dig down in a field, the steel of a shovel or posthole digger will hit the chert in the soil, causing the ground to spark. That difficulty of breaking the land can be heard in the people here--we set flint to our words. Speaking this way is at the heart of THIS DITCH-WALKING LOVE.

Fiction. Short Stories.