On a bone-chilling New Year's Day, when all the mountain roads are slick with ice, Clay's mother, Anneth, insists on leaving her husband. She packs her things, and with three-year-old Clay in tow, they inch their way toward her hometown along the treacherous mountain roads. That journey ends in the death of Clay's mother. It's a day that comes to haunt her only son, who's left without a family and a history. This is the story of how Clay Sizemore, a coal miner in love with his town but unsure of his place within it, finds a family to call his own. And it's the story of the people who become part of the life he shapes: Aunt Easter, always filled with a sense of foreboding and bound to her faith above all; Uncle Paul, quietly producing quilt after quilt; Dreama, beautiful and flighty; Evangeline, the untameable daughter of a famous gospel singer; and Alma, the fiddler whose song wends its way into Clay's heart. Together, they all help Clay to fashion a quilt of a life from what treasured pieces are around him. Authentic and moving, Clay's Quilt is both the story of a young man's journey and of Appalachian people struggling to hold on to their heritage.

"This book will teach you how to create a wonderful array of unique surface designs, each made by combining day with other media such as inks, paints, and powders, and other tools such as stamps, brushes, stencils, brayers, and wire. Starting with a comprehensive overview onworking with day, the book then offers more than 100 surface recipes and variations with complete details about how the effect was achieved."-- Back cover.

“A novel for our time, a courageous and necessary book.” —Jennifer Haigh, author of Heat and Light In this stunning novel about judgment, courage, heartbreak, and change, author Silas House wrestles with the limits of belief and the infinite ways to love. In the aftermath of a flood that washes away much of a small Tennessee town, evangelical preacher Asher Sharp offers shelter to two gay men. In doing so, he starts to see his life anew—and risks losing everything: his wife, locked into her religious prejudices; his congregation, which shuns Asher after he delivers a passionate sermon in defense of tolerance; and his young son, Justin, caught in the middle of what turns into a bitter custody battle. With no way out but ahead, Asher takes Justin and flees to Key West, where he hopes to find his brother, Luke, whom he’d turned against years ago after Luke came out. And it is there, at the southernmost point of the country, that Asher and Justin discover a new way of thinking about the world, and a new way of understanding love. Southernmost is a tender and affecting book, a meditation on love and its consequences.

In this extraordinary novel in letters, an Indian immigrant girl in New York City and a Kentucky coal miner's son find strength and perspective by sharing their true selves across the miles. Meena and River have a lot in common: fathers forced to work away from home to make ends meet, grandmothers who mean the world to them, and faithful dogs. But Meena is an Indian immigrant girl living in New York City’s Chinatown, while River is a Kentucky coal miner’s son. As Meena’s family studies for citizenship exams and River’s town faces devastating mountaintop removal, this unlikely pair become pen pals, sharing thoughts and, as their camaraderie deepens, discovering common ground in their disparate experiences. With honesty and humor, Meena and River bridge the miles between them, creating a friendship that inspires bravery and defeats cultural misconceptions. Narrated in two voices, each voice distinctly articulated by a separate gifted author, this chronicle of two lives powerfully conveys the great value of being and having a friend and the joys of opening our lives to others who live beneath the same sun.

When Silas House made his debut with Clay's Quilt last year, it touched a nerve not just in his home state (where it quickly became a bestseller), but all across the country. Glowing reviews-from USA Today (House is letter-perfect with his first novel), to the Philadelphia Inquirer (Compelling. . . . House knows what's important and reminds us of the value of family and home, love and loyalty), to the Mobile Register (Poetic, haunting), and everywhere in between-established him as a writer to watch. His second novel won't disappoint. Set in 1917, A PARCHMENT OF LEAVES tells the story of Vine, a beautiful Cherokee woman who marries a white man, forsaking her family and their homeland to settle in with his people and make a home in the heart of the mountains. Her mother has strange forebodings that all will not go well, and she's right. Vine is viewed as an outsider, treated with contempt by other townspeople. Add to that her brother-in-law's fixation on her, and Vine's life becomes more complicated than she could have ever imagined. In the violent turn of events that ensues, she learns what it means to forgive others and, most important, how to forgive herself. As haunting as an old-time ballad, A PARCHMENT OF LEAVES is filled with the imagery, dialect, music, and thrumming life of the Kentucky mountains. For Silas House, whose great-grandmother was Cherokee, this novel is also a tribute to the family whose spirit formed him.

Renowned for their courses and workshops on color, the authors offer instruction and inspiration that focuses on polymer clay as a learning tool that crafters can use to explore their own color instincts and preferences. Each chapter investigates a color principle supported by a jewelry project.

Soft, light air-dry clay is the perfect material for everyone from grade school crafters to professional sculptors. Here is everything you need to know. Learn the basics of working with clay. Develop your skills and know-how. Sculpt amazing designs to give as gifts. Create functional art for practical uses. You will discover amazing abilities you may not have realized you possessed. Plus, it's perfect for any age, so you can get the kids involved. Clay art is a wonderful rainy-day activity that entertains the whole family! Try creating with hearty clay. It is an easily worked material that doesn't require heat to cure. It's easy to work with on small projects. For bigger projects, this book contains advice on the simple steps you can take to ensure that your clay doesn't dry out. Coloring clay is another way to add pizazz to your work. Hearty clay provides a color clay scale that will give you perfect outcomes every time you mix and blend. The results of your efforts will pay off in beautiful, colorful forms. Your clay can be rolled in a pasta maker, torn, or cut. Use decorative scissors for an additional design element. Hand-rolling and stamping are great options as well. Punch, press, or emboss amusing shapes into clay. Co-authors Donna Kato, Emi Fukushima, and Ting-Yao Chen bring an unmatched pool of knowledge to you. They'll inspire you with their many ideas, including: *Cards: shape unique sentimental expressions *Blended Vessels: mold pencil holders and more *Dolls: fashion intricate and endearing figures *Florals: encourage fabulous flowers to bloom *Blended Masks: decorate intriguing elements of home decor *Containers: fabricate trinket boxes, bowls, and more. The only limit for what you can create is your own imagination!

Frank Corso runs his own Wall Street research consultancy and has an unusual ability to make friends. A forty year old bachelor living in New York, he is getting increasingly comfortable to a high-life marked by eroding moral virtue. On a business trip to visit a New Orleans based company, he gets more than he bargained for. In the weeks before Christmas of 2004, he is recruited by his ex-girlfriend to find her friend, a young mystic, who has disappeared. New Orleans is a city in Transition. The economy has been improving post the dot com crash, and local government and business leaders are leveraging the city’s crown jewel, The French Quarter. The haven for tourists also has a dark side. The city is marred by political corruption and violence. In 2004, it has the distinction of being the murder capital of the United States. Corso soon finds The Big Easy culture known for its architecture, food and music, filled with a rich marinade of diverse and unusual characters. Befriending people with deep roots in the shallow clays of the Mississippi River, his life is about to change course. He is about to discover the secrets of...The Divine Travel Agency.

Left to raise themselves in a small coal-mining town in Tennessee, Anneth and Easter, two very different sisters--one destined for the glittering world of Nashville, the other a devout Pentecostal--struggle to come to terms with the death of their mother as their long and difficult journey brings them back to their origins and to each other. By the author of Clay's Quilt.

This practical handbook of properties for soils and rock contains, in a concise tabular format, the key issues relevant to geotechnical investigations, assessments and designs in common practice. In addition, there are brief notes on the application of the tables. These data tables are compiled for experienced geotechnical professionals who require a reference document to access key information. There is an extensive database of correlations for different applications. The book should provide a useful bridge between soil and rock mechanics theory and its application to practical engineering solutions. The initial chapters deal with the planning of the geotechnical investigation, the classification of the soil and rock properties and some of the more used testing is then covered. Later chapters show the reliability and correlations that are used to convert that data in the interpretative and assessment phase of the project. The final chapters apply some of these concepts to geotechnical design. This book is intended primarily for practicing geotechnical engineers working in investigation, assessment and design, but should provide a useful supplement for postgraduate courses.