Book Review: Nothing Gold Can Stay, stories by Ron Rash

A few stories into this collection of fourteen I found myself asking aloud, "How did I ever miss this guy?"

Rash hasn't exactly been obscure: he's won several prizes over a decade of publishing novels and short stories.  But I hadn't ever come across his work before.  Now I have everything he's written out from the library, stacked beside the couch for a glorious summer author study.

Nothing Gold Can Stay, as the title indicates, bears the heavy theme of decline and death - the cover art,  a bare tree silhouetted grey on black before the moon of the "o" in "nothing" - captures the feel of the book perfectly.  The same tree is featured on the spine, but in gold.

The story "Where the Map Ends" demonstrates the collection's verve.  Two fugitive slaves - one older, one younger - spend the night in the loft of a barn, and wake to find the farmer has discovered them.  Rash frames the tension beautifully:

A cowbell woke them, the animal ambling into the barn, a man in frayed overalls following with a gallon pail.  A scraggly gray beard covered much of his face, some streaks of brown in his lank hair.  He was thin and tall, and his neck and back bowed forward as if from years of ducking.  As the farmer set his stool beside the cow's flank, a gray cat appeared and positioned itself close by.  Milk spurts hissed against the tin.  The fugitives peered through the board gaps.  The youth's stomach growled audibly. ... The farmer did not look up but his shoulders tensed and his free hand clenched the pail tighter.  He quickly left the barn.

The tension releases when the fugitives realize the farmer is not overly fond of their former master and therefore sympathetic to aiding their escape.  But not entirely.  The farmer sees traces of the slave master's red hair in the younger fugitive and directs all his antipathy for the war and wealth at this one, while aiding the older, African-born fugitive in his quest for freedom, leaving the elder slave to decide if he can abandon his youthful charge.

The people in Rash's stories are desperate, trapped by circumstances, and scrambling for release from their trials.  Like the elder fugitive in "Where the Map Ends," they learn that freedom does not come without its burdens.