Above the Waterfall

Ron Rash

What else is here? I listen. This section of stream purls and riffles amid small stones. What word might be made for what I hear?
Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash (Paperback ISBN 9781782118015) book cover

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From the New York Times bestseller comes a haunting novel with the poetic quality of William Faulkner

Nothing else comes so I set the notebook beside me. What else is here? I ask myself and listen. This section of stream purls and riffles amid small stones. What word might be made for what I hear …

Les Clary’s final case has broken the still surface of his backwater town.
Becky, a park ranger with her own mysterious past, shares Les’s consolation in the natural world that lies just beyond their hopelessly broken town. As Les and Becky explore of the county’s lyrically beautiful landscape, they finds themselves led deeper into the heart of the town’s corruption, and into the darkness of their own ruptured histories.
This haunting novel is a poetic journey into the wilderness of the heart.


“A writer’s writer who writes for others”
Colum Mccann

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“A gorgeous, brutal writer”
Richard Price

“One of the great American authors at work today”
Janet Maslin
new York Times

“Ron Rash is a writer of both the darkly beautiful and the sadly true … One of our very finest novelists”
Richard Russo

“Magnificent is suddenly too small a word”
irish Times


Ron Rash

Ron Rash is an award-winning poet, short-story writer and novelist. His novels include The Cove, The World Made Straight and New York Times bestseller and 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist, Serena, now a major motion picture. He is also the author of several short story collections including Nothing Gold Can Stay, Burning Bright, winner of the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, a finalist for the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award. He lives in the Appalachian Mountains, USA.