Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash is a collection of brisk Appalachian short stories. Often, one can read a short story in a single sitting: here you could probably knock out two or three. They're all good, and a few are great. Rash plumbs the abyss of his Carolina setting, detailing slavery in one story, meth addiction in another. While the exposition is laid on a bit thick in the first few pages of each story--mainly to quickly get to the heart of the conflict--the endings were excellent. He's a master of plot twists and surprises, and I genuinely did not predict the outcome of most of these troubling little stories. I also enjoyed one creative-writing experiment: the story "Something Rich and Strange" is a re-working of the first chapter of his novel Saints at the River. I thought I was rereading the chapter, admiring its poetic tragedy, when Rash surprised me with a wholly different (and probably better) conclusion.
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