The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.

Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. But why? As she began to write about living through all the dying, Jesmyn realized the truth -- and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle....

On a cold Sunday evening in early 1957, Sarah Dewhurst waited with her father in the parking lot of the Chevron gas station for the dragon he'd hired to help on the farm... Sarah Dewhurst and her father, outcasts in their little town of Frome, Washington, are forced to hire a dragon to work their farm, something only the poorest of the poor ever have to resort to. The dragon, Kazimir, has more to him than meets the eye, though. Sarah can't help but...

Three lives collide on an island off India: "An engrossing tale of caste and culture... introduces readers to a little-known world."—Entertainment Weekly

Off the easternmost coast of India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the immense labyrinth of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans. For settlers here, life is extremely precarious. Attacks by tigers are common. Unrest and eviction are constant threats. At any moment, tidal...

In 1936, a young mother resting by the side of a road in central California is spontaneously photographed by a woman documenting the migrant laborers who have taken to America's farms in search of work. Little personal information is exchanged, and neither woman has any way of knowing that they have produced what will become the most iconic image of the Great Depression. - from cover p.[2]

From the Publisher: Appalachia has played a complex and often contradictory role in the unfolding of American history. Created by urban journalists in the years following the Civil War, the idea of Appalachia provided a counterpoint to emerging definitions of progress. Early-twentieth-century critics of modernity saw the region as a remnant of frontier life, a reflection of simpler times that should be preserved and protected. However, supporters...

"Glenna Daniels faces a midlife cul-de-sac. She bears a recent miscarriage and third divorce the way her Appalachian parents taught her to cope with tragedy-in stoic secrecy. She quits her social work position in Knoxville and runs away from home at the age of thirty-six, heading west with childhood friend, Carey, a gay professor in Atlanta. During their years in school, Glenna protected him from bullies. Now Carey is her savvy guide as she tries...