Book description

Winner of the 2019 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction, the characters in these emotionally charged stories deal with loneliness, loss, greed, and guilt. They, like all of us, wrestle with the people, places, and memories they cling to, belong to, and run from, learning (sometimes too late), that these experiences remain with them forever. The nine stories in The Lightness of Water and Other Stories are bound by a strong sense of place—Appalachia and the South—and prove that no matter where we go, there’s no place far enough to leave home behind. 

Praise for The Lightness of Water and Other Stories

Rhonda Browning White’s debut story collection, The Lightness of Water & Other Stories, is a deep dive into the dark currents of the Appalachian coal region, a place in America where mountains are destroyed and people’s lives are poisoned. These are hard hitting stories by a young writer with a ruthless eye for the truth.

—Edward Falco, author of Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha: New and Selected Stories

The Lightness of Water & Other Stories masterfully renders the lives of West Virginia characters displaced from the fragile land and culture of their deeply rooted ancestors. Fraught by the aftermath of coal mining and lumber companies, Rhonda Browning White’s characters grapple with poisoned land, cancer, joblessness, and infertility. Despite the explosive circumstances, these stories are nuanced and finely crafted, infused with humor and humanity. This is a thrilling and highly satisfying debut collection by a craftswoman already at the height of her powers.

—Susan Tekulve, author of In the Garden of Stone and Second Shift

In her stunning debut, Rhonda Browning White tells stories on behalf of those who cannot, desperate men and women whose shattered and broken lives play out in the mountains between the Ohio and Shenandoah Rivers. Make room for her. These are dangerous stories. Urgent, needful and aching, they will not be denied.

—Robert Olmstead, author of The Coldest Night and Savage Country

How can we love a place that’s killing us? Why plant roots in a rootless world? Ranging from those left behind on the forgotten mountains of West Virginia to DAR mean girls and wannabes, Rhonda Browning White’s resilient people give voice to the hard questions and, ultimately, show us the way home.

—Leslie Pietrzyk, author of Silver Girl and This Angel on My Chest

The finely drawn pieces in this moving and remarkable debut collection provide an authoritative view of the sources of heartbreak as well as the abiding strengths to be found within our Appalachian heartland. These stories focus on the rapacious disregard of mining companies for the natural landscape and the men and women who labor there, upon the devastating effects of the opioid and methamphetamine crisis, and also upon the enduring power of love in its many forms: romantic, familial, and that of inhabitants for their native land. To read it is to be informed and inspired.

—Les Standiford, The New York Times best-selling author of Last Train to Paradise and Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, and the Rise of America's Xanadu

“The reason life is so strange,” wrote William Maxwell, “is that so often people have no choice.” Rhonda Browning White’s weary coal miners, Vietnam vets and small-town addicts know this in their bones. It’s not just hard luck they’re up against but the way of the world, and when they try to break free, even the few choices they do make feel wrong. The Lightness of Water & Other Stories is like the best country music—a tough front covering a broken heart.

—Stewart O’Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster and Emily, Alone

The stories in Rhonda Browning White’s excellent first collection are laid out in a perfectly balanced tension between the necessities and responsibilities of love–and ecological and personal catastrophe.

—Meredith Sue Willis, author of Their Houses and In Mountains of America

One might describe the lives of the characters in this collection as hardscrabble, but that word “hardscrabble” would paint these characters and their stories with too broad and dismissive a brush, would suggest their lives are too far removed from ours. Rhonda Browning White's artistry and insight takes us so much deeper into the nuances of her characters' lives that we get to know them up close, recognize parts of ourselves within them, and see how much of their lives are our own—so much so we are moved, sometimes to tears, in the way great stories always move us.

—Marlin Barton, author of Pasture Art

Rhonda Browning White’s voice ranges from the Great Smokies of the early twentieth century to the contemporary language of OxyContin and mountaintop removal. Her memorable characters are a welcome addition to the Appalachian literary landscape.

—Denise Giardina, author of Fallam’s Secret: A Novel and The Unquiet Earth: A Novel

Rhonda White has given us memorable stories featuring extraordinary characters. The prose is assured and frequently lovely. She writes with a compassion and emotional precision that few short story authors can match.

—Eliot Parker, author of A Knife's Edge