This Rock Book

From the author of Gap Creek - an international bestseller and winner of the Southern Book Award for fiction - comes the gripping story of two brothers struggling against each other and the confines of their 1920s Appalachian Mountain world.

The Powell brothers, Muir and Moody, are as different as Cain and Abel. Muir is an innocent, a shy young man with big dreams and not the slightest idea of what to do about them. Moody, the older and wilder brother - embittered by the death of his father, by years of fighting his mother, and by his jealousy of Muir's privileged place in the family - takes to moonshine and gambling and turns his anger on his brother. Muir escapes, hoping to find something - an occupation, a calling - to match his ambition.

Through it all their mother, Ginny tries to steer them right, all the while remembering her own losses: her husband, her youth, and the fiery sense of God that once ordered her world.

When Muir discovers his purpose in life, the consequences are far - reaching and irrevocable: a community threatens to tear itself apart, and his family is forever changed.

All that's left in the aftermath are the memories of a new, wiser man. This Rock is Robert Morgan's most ambitious and accomplished novel yet.

Publishers Weekly

Morgan follows up his bestselling Gap Creek with another tale of the Carolina wilderness in the 1920s. Muir Powell is three years younger than his brother, Moody, but the two are light years apart in temperament and attitude. Muir is his widowed mother Ginny's clear favorite, a position he earns by being unselfishly supportive of the family's needs. A callow youth who dreams of building, he tries his hand at preaching, trapping and a variety of other occupations, only to fail miserably and return home in frustrated disgrace every time. Moody, who's wild and undisciplined, hardly works at all and spends his time in the company of bootleggers and prostitutes. Jealous of Muir's favored position in the household, he derides his younger brother's efforts to find his way and support the family. Told in a gentle, flowing prose that shifts unevenly between Muir's and Ginny's points of view, the novel maps out life in a remote, tradition-bound region. Underscoring all is the family's fundamentalist religion and their devotion to old-fashioned family values. Muir's capricious decision to build a church on the family land forces matters to a crisis that tests the family's faith and commitment to one another, and in the final chapters, Muir's discovery of his true calling sustains and validates their belief in the strength of love and the ties that bind. Although the novel suffers from overdetailing, episodic pacing and seemingly pointless anecdotal tangents that leave many loose ends dangling in the mountain breeze, it's an entirely pleasant read and a testimony to the power of faith and integrity in the face of life's severest hardships. (Sept. 28) Forecast: It's unlikely that sales of Morgan'slatest will match Gap Creek totals Gap Creek was an Oprah selection and an international bestseller but This Rock is in much the same vein, so new and old fans should be satisfied. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.