This Rock - Hardcover

The Powell brothers, Muir and Moody, are as different as Cain and Abel. Muir is an innocent, a shy young man with big dreams and not the slightest idea of what to do about them. Moody, the older and wilder brother - embittered by the death of his father, by years of fighting his mother, and by his jealousy of Muir's privileged place in the family - takes to moonshine and gambling and turns his anger on his brother. Muir escapes, hoping to find something - an occupation, a calling - to match his ambition.

Through it all their mother, Ginny tries to steer them right, all the while remembering her own losses: her husband, her youth, and the fiery sense of God that once ordered her world.

When Muir discovers his purpose in life, the consequences are far - reaching and irrevocable: a community threatens to tear itself apart, and his family is forever changed.

All that's left in the aftermath are the memories of a new, wiser man. This Rock is Robert Morgan's most ambitious and accomplished novel yet.

"At their finest, his stripped - down and almost primitive sentences burn with the raw, lonesome pathos of Hank William's best song." (The New York Times Book Review)

"Reminiscent of James Dickey - bearing the same naturalistic marks of clear, clean prose and often disturbing imageryT Morgan casts a stark story peopled with real, believable, and honest characters." (Baltimore Sun)

"Morgan turns the stories of prosaic lives into page - turners." (The News and Observer)

"Morgan writes "with an authority usually associated with the great novelists of the last century." (The Boston Book Review)