Bøger af John Omwake

A motley group of people are thrown together on a foggy day. Two longtime friends make a startling discovery. A woman's plan to free a prisoner with whom she has become infatuated goes awry. An elderly widower decides to climb his favorite mountain one last time. These are a few of the stories--some selected from the author's previous collections, the others new--that are told in this book. Sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, but always engaging, together they offer a varied and insightful look at lives both now and during the recent past.JOHN OMWAKE is also the author of THE EDUCATION OF NEELY ROSE WALLER, LIMESTONE COUNTY and RANKIN CREEK.

When Rebecca Rankin travels from her mountain farm along Rankin Creek in remote Limestone County to attend her sister's funeral in Indiana, she does more than pay her respects. She sees her son, from whom she has been estranged for more than thirty years. And she meets, for the first time, her granddaughter, Kristi. Plucky but troubled, Kristi needs the love Rebecca can give, while Rebecca seeks the hope she thinks Kristi can offer. Also weighing heavily on Rebecca is her goal, bordering on obsession, of ensuring that the farm, owned by her family for over two and a half centuries, remains in Rankin hands after she is gone. Amid all this, both Rebecca and Kristi embark on journeys during which they learn to see themselves--and others--through fresh eyes. What ensues is a powerful tale of discovery, forgiveness, and redemption that will linger in the reader's mind long after the final page has been turned. John Omwake's previous works include THE EDUCATION OF NEELY ROSE WALLER and LIMESTONE COUNTY, in which the story of the Rankin family begins.

Growing up around the middle of the last century, Neelyrose Waller, the youngest of sixteen children, dreams of becoming the first member of her poor Tennessee mountain family to go to college. A dedicated teacher shows her the way and, after initial doubts, her barely literate father, Laban Waller, gives his support. Also on her side is her sweetheart, Joel Crabtree, a high-school classmate and aspiring author.Just as Neelyrose's dream nears reality, calamity befalls, testing her grit to the limit. Her story is an uplifting tale of courage and perseverance that will linger in the reader's thoughts long after its final sentence is read.-John Omwake's other books of fiction are Limestone County, Rankin Creek, and Ambience. He lives in southwestern Virginia.

A moving and poignant look at rural life in the recent past, LIMESTONE COUNTY chronicles, across a span of thirty years, the comings and goings in an isolated and mountainous locality inhabited by substantial, believable, and interesting people who are worth reading about. They include an outsider who accused a local man of a heinous crime, but does not count on the ways of small-town justice; a young woman of sullied reputation searching for a good man to marry; the aging sheriff who wants no trouble on his watch; the newspaper publisher whose weekly Limestone Echo is the county's bible; an old lady whose quiet life takes a public turn when she grows a sensationally large tomato; and the banker who sees the region through the dark years of the Great Depression. Finally, there is beautiful, strong-willed Rebecca Rankin, whose unflinching determination to restore, in the face of daunting odds, the fortunes of her family, the first to settle in what became Limestone County, propels much of the narrative. What emerges is a portrait of a community that is as complex, tender, comical, and tragic as the people who live in it.

The Conestoga wagon was instrumental in the transportation of goods and people for both consumer and military purposes. Originating in England, early Pennsylvania craftsmen perfected the vehicle's design for use in the colonies, especially the roads of Pennsylvania. German craftsmen in Lancaster and Berks Counties were best known for their wagons, and soon they were traversing the Keystone State, hauling farm goods and supplies between towns and markets. Of course, these wagons then play a key role in the westward migration.