Hollow Ground
By Stephen Marion
(Picador, Paperback, 9780312422356, 320pp.)
Publication Date: May 2003
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover
Categories: General
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When Gary left Zinctown, Tennessee, he left behind a father whom he couldn’t please, a long-dead brother, and a young woman carrying his child. But after fourteen years, Gary has returned. His adolescent son Taft is under the precarious influence of an ex-convict uncle and a grandfather obsessed with documenting the town’s history. Taft’s mother has grown hard and used to doing things for herself. And the small town, gutted from below by the mines that support its residents, is quietly being eaten alive.
Hollow Ground signals the arrival of one of the most astonishing Southern voices to come along in years.
Stephen Marion works as a reporter and photographer for a local newspaper in East Tennessee. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and the Arthur Lynn Andrews Prize for Fiction at Cornell University. He lives in Dandridge, Tennessee, and Hollow Ground is his first novel.
“Told with such clarity and beauty that it resonates with the power of the sacred...One of the most notable debuts in recent memory.” —Annie Dillard
“Marion works these scenes to something like perfection. His touch with local dialect and dialogue is also close to perfect.... His feeling for character is so good that even the unbelievable characters convince you while you’re in their company.” —The Boston Globe
“Lovely...perfect...Hollow Ground is an auspicious beginning for a writer with real promise.” —Chicago Tribune
“[Marion] creates a dark, sensual world.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution











