A review by williamc
All the Living by C.E. Morgan

5.0

Lyric and moving without reaching for sympathy, "All the Living" is a brief, starkly poetic novel that explores the longing, hopes, and hard-won endurance of unmarried couple, Alona and Orren, as they struggle on an inherited Kentucky tobacco farm. Because the themes of grasping ambition and whetstone labor are presented with crystalline authenticity, the few scenes of naked hope and incautious love arrive like revelations -- as unexpectedly joyful as Alona's hands at the piano. This is a wonderful first novel that never drops a note.