His First, Best Country

Novel. Available again from SPD, "His First, Best Country" is one of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read..." (Gurney Norman, Appalachian Heritage). Whether describing the natural wonders of the Appalachian Mountains or a drunk friend passing out on a car's horn, Jim Wayne Miller's language is right on target: "And they'd leave the fire to follow the hounds, their blood aroused, their noses tingling with all the possibilities of weed smoke and awakening earth. Hurrying after the hounds, suddenly believers again, faith in the woods restored by a wildness that entered them in the music of baying hounds." Joyce Dyer of Appalachian Journal writes, "Jim Wayne Miller is wonderful when he goes to the core of what is most painful and most difficult about our relationship to home, about our relationship to the land that has sustained us, to the people that have loved or tried to love us, to our neighbors, and to ourselves."