In World War II-era rural Kentucky, twenty-two-year-old Easter and Anneth, her teenaged sister, lose their parents young, so they must raise each other. Easter finds her life in the Pentecostal Holiness church and its music, while Anneth dances and drinks in less-than-holy honky-tonks. Will the differences in their young lives and in their very natures tear them apart or will the bond of the sisters prevail? In lucid prose with an ear for the voice of the sisters’ time and place, Silas House brings readers a rich and moving story of coal country.
This novel was named The Appalachian Book of the Year, and was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Prize.
Blair brings this novel into a beautiful new paperback edition, along with two other Silas House novels, Clay’s Quilt and A Parchment of Leaves. The three novels, which share a common setting and some characters, are companion novels. They may be read individually, in any order, but collectively, they form a rich tableau of life in rural mountain Kentucky in the last century.
The Coal Tattoo, by Silas House
Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of eight novels (Clay's Quilt [2001], A Parchment of Leaves [2003], The Coal Tattoo [2005], Eli the Good [2009], Same Sun Here [2012], Southernmost [2018] and Lark Ascending [2022], which was a Booklist Editors' Choice and is the winner of the 2023 Southern Book Prize and the 2023 Nautilus Book Award. Four of his plays have been produced. He is also the author of the 2009 book of creative nonfiction Something's Rising (with co-author Jason Kyle Howard).In 2025 he will release two books: a poetry collection called All These Ghosts (September 19) and--under a slight pseudonym--a murder-mystery called Dead Man Blues (October 24).
In 2023 he was inducted as the Poet Laureate of Kentucky for 2023-2025 and became a Grammy finalist. In 2022 he was the recipient of the Duggins Prize, the largest award for an LGBTQ writer in the nation. The same year he was named Appalachian of the Year in a nationwide poll.
House's writing has appeared recently in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Garden & Gun, The New York Times, The Bitter Southerner, and many more of the country's leading publications. House is a former commentator for NPR's "All Things Considered" and is the executive producer and one of the subjects of the documentary Hillbilly, winner of the LA Film Festival's Documentary Prize and the Foreign Press Association's Media Award; the film ran on Hulu, where it was seen by millions of viewers, and is now available to stream on all platforms. His 2018 novel Southernmost is currently in pre-production as a feature film. In 2023 he served as writer, co-producer, and creative director of the Tyler Childers video "In Your Love", earning nominations from the Grammys, the Academy of Country Music, an MTV Video Award, and the Country Music Television Awards, as well as becoming a #1 video on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
As a music journalist, House has worked with Jason Isbell, Kacey Musgraves, Lucinda Williams, Tyler Childers, S.G. Goodman, Lee Ann Womack, Kris Kristofferson, S.G. Goodman, and many other musicians. He is the member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the recipient of three honorary degrees, and has been given such honors as an E. B. White Award, the Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library/NAV Foundation, the Lee Smith Award, the Caritas Medal, the Hobson Medal, and many others. In 2015 he was invited to read at the Library of Congress.
House teaches at Berea College, where he is the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair, and at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Creative Writing. In 2023 he served as one of five judges of the National Book Award in Fiction. A native of Eastern Kentucky, he now lives in Lexington, Kentucky.