River Road
Poems by Wayne Caldwell
Available 9/3/2024
River Road is a collection of narrative poems in the voice of Susan McFalls, writing from her new home in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
Wayne Caldwell, author of Cataloochee, returns to North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains to continue the story of Susan McFalls, who is left on Mount Pisgah after the death of her dear friend and neighbor Posey Green. These poems follow Susan as she moves to and renovates an old house on River Road, vividly bringing to life the wild and beautiful land and culture of the Blue Ridge and the cherished memories and new friends that continue to anchor her to this special place.
River Road is a companion to Caldwell’s first poetry collection, Woodsmoke, and while the two can stand alone, together they paint a fuller picture of friendship, loss, and the ways in which lives are shaped by the North Carolina mountains.
Paperback ISBN: 9781958888353
"In the River Road poems we attend again the valiant voice of Susan McFalls, she who entranced us in the Woodsmoke collection. A little older, a bit more experienced, she has not essentially changed. And so we, her attentive audience, are expectant, reassured, and pleased to follow and applaud. These poems speak and happen all at once, convincing, admirable, true."
—Fred Chappell, As If It Were and I Am One of You Forever
"Wayne Caldwell’s River Road is a wonderful sequel to his Woodsmoke, that tour de force of Appalachian voice and language. The speaker of this engaging new collection, a friend of the now-deceased Posey Green who narrated the first book, is not a native of the mountains like him, but her imagination, wit, and sympathetic spirit help us to see their corner of the world—now her home, too—with fresh eyes. How fortunate we are to have this vividly detailed poetic diptych, embodying the Appalachia that endures even as it changes."
—Michael McFee, A Long Time to Be Gone and Earthly
"In this deeply satisfying collection of poems, Wayne Caldwell invites readers to pause and sit a spell. We are rewarded with poetic meditations about the beauty of Appalachia, nature, solitude, spirituality, rebirth, and the creative impulse. Both playful and somber, Caldwell pokes fun at literary artifice at the same time he demonstrates the power of prosody to celebrate one’s love for these mountains. This is a collection for every season."
—Erica Abrams Locklear, Appalachia on the Table
Wayne Caldwell is the author of the novels Cataloochee (2007) and Requiem by Fire (2010) and the poetry collection Woodsmoke (2021). He has won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association, and the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He lives with his wife, Mary, just west of Asheville, on land that has been in her family since 1831. In his spare time, he works up firewood.
