20th Anniversary Edition of this classic poetry collection, with a foreword by New York TImes Bestselling author, Robert Morgan and a new preface by the author.
First published in 1998, Eureka Mill is Ron Rash’s seminal collection of poetry. It introduced the world to an often overlooked Appalachian region and cemented Rash’s name as synonymous with Southern writing.
Eureka Mill presents a lyrical portrait of the migration of poor North Carolina farmers to Chester, South Carolina to work in the Eureka Cotton Mill in the years before the Great Depression. Drawing on his family history in the region that stretches back three hundred years, Rash assembles a nuanced tapestry of mill village life, from the foremen in their offices to the men and women at the looms toiling in the often inhumane conditions of the mills.
Rash’s poetry elevates the people and landscapes of rural Appalachia to incandescent heights, garnering comparisons to the work of Seamus Heaney and Robert Frost. Still one of Rash’s finest works to date, Eureka Mill is a vital record of one of the South’s most important historic shifts, offering readers at once intimacy and perspective, heart and understanding.