Ron Rash is one of the great chroniclers of modern Appalachia, a writer whose insight and empathy have illuminated this terrain in three transcendent novels. In his new volume of stories, spanning the entire twentieth century, Rash chronicles the onset of the modern era in rural communities, the deterioration of the old ways, and the violent arrival of a broader world.<BR>Three old men stalk the shadow of a giant fish no one else in town believes is there. A son watches his father take up scuba diving in the town reservoir to fight off a killing depression. A grieving mother leads a surveyor deep into the thorny woods to name once and for all the county and state where her son was murdered by thieves.<BR>In the Appalachian Mountains of Ron Rash's stories, the collisions of the Old and New South, of antique and modern, of family and the wider world, resonate with the depth and power of ancient myths.