Editor’s Note

Abstract

Editor’s Note Jason Kyle Howard Layoffs and loneliness, the feeling that the world, dark and cold, is closing in. These themes form the backdrop of Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December,” a masterpiece of American songwriting about a literal and figurative winter. It’s a song I have known all my life, one of those so embedded in memory and family history that I cannot remember not knowing it. And this winter, I am finding some solace in Haggard’s lyrics and in the weariness of his craggy voice. [End Page 5] Hard times, these are, what with the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths skyrocketing, with millions out of work, with our politics growing increasingly malevolent and outright dangerous. Our current moment is as chilly as “the falling snow” that Haggard describes, but instead of turning to the arts for escapism, I have caught myself seeking out music, literature, and film that confronts the rough and rocky parts of life. Much of the writing in this issue of Appalachian Review has consequently taken on these themes, beginning with the work of this year’s featured author, Wiley Cash. Since he strode on to the literary scene in 2012 with his debut A Land More Kind than Home, Cash has been celebrated as a voice of the Southern working-class, one that deepened with his follow-up This Dark Road to Mercy and his most recent novel The Last Ballad, a New York Times bestseller. And now, we are proud to introduce you to “A Great Distance,” Cash’s new short story, in which he conjures a memorable character and place, as well as an interview in which he discusses his working-class roots and how he wants to see “the South survive and thrive” by confronting its moral failings. In a special feature, Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt contributes an essay exploring Cash’s devotion to his home region and how, in The Last Ballad, he tells the story of Ella May Wiggins, a small-town mill worker who makes a fateful choice to fight for workers’ rights and social justice in the Loray Mill Strike in 1929. Now, nearly a hundred years later, poet and essayist Victoria C. Flanagan confronts the haunted landscape of the strike—how the place has “flipped to high-class lofts” as the strike’s history and meaning have been “shoveled over.” This issue also features “Socks and Junior,” a moving essay from Denise Giardina on how she, her mother, and a pair of cats all grew up in their own ways in a West Virginia coal [End Page 6] camp; “For What It’s Worth,” a powerful story from Jayne Moore Waldrop, which will appear in her forthcoming linked story collection Drowned Town; and poems by Waldrop, Marc Harshman, Barbara Costas-Biggs, Jamey Temple, Amy McCleese Nichols, and Cynthia Alby. As we creep further into the woods of this dim winter, my prayer is that you might find some warmth and identification in this issue. May Haggard’s words soon become a reality for us all: “Everything’s gonna be alright, I know.” [End Page 7] Copyright © 2020 Berea College