I've been aware of Ron Rash for several years now as one of the foremost Southern writers of our time, and now I've finally managed to read one of his books, an early one I found in a used book store. And THE WORLD MADE STRAIGHT (2006) is, I have to tell you, one helluva ride, and presented in some of the most exquisite, poetic prose I've read in years. It is a very Southern coming of age tale, set in North Carolina, with its seventeen year-old protagonist, Travis Shelton, a high school dropout, who runs afoul of Carlton Toomey, a vicious local drug lord, is kicked out of his home by his tobacco farming father, and finds refuge in the rundown trailer home of Leonard Shuler, a disgraced former teacher who sells beer and pills to underage kids. Under Leonard's care and tutelage, and encouraged by a new girlfriend, Travis gradually begins to see a way out of the dead end life of gritty poverty which is so evident all around him. There is also an historical angle here, as Leonard, a very bookish type who came from a background as poor as Travis's, is studying the journals of a great-great grandfather, A doctor in the Civil War who was party to a local massacre that continues to resonate in smoldering resentment among the victims' families. And just when it seems Travis has turned his life around, one night of impulsive anger and violence brings him full circle to face the vengeful rage of Carlton Toomey, threatening to bring all of his dreams come crashing down. Indeed the last fifty-plus pages had me literally sitting up straight, on the edge of my recliner reading as fast as I could. I mean this Ron Rash really is GOOD! Fortunately I have another of his books, SERENA, waiting on my pile. (And, incidentally, both this book and SERENA have been adapted to films too.) Because now that I've finally "discovered" this guy, I know I'll definitely be seeking out his other stuff. This one gets my very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

Protagonist Travis leaves his home to live with a drug dealer who used to be a school teacher, they live in a trailer in the woods. He studies to pass the GED and learns a lot about life. Story starts out with him fishing and getting his leg caught in a bear trap while stealing weed plants. Also talks a lot about the massacre that happened in the town in the civil war, Lenoard's family was on one side while Travis' was on the other.
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Atlanta Journal Constitution called Ron Rash “one of the major writers of our time.” To me, he is this and more. Ron Rash writes in a gritty, mountain vernacular that can’t be faked; one has to come from it and know it as their own voice of consciousness in order to wield it as plausibly as he. Rash’s language, therefore, is its own reasoning; it speaks of a clear-cut, hard-edged, uncompromising way of living in the world devoid of the illusion of optimism. One wonders, as they read Rash, if it is the jaded wrappings of cynicism or the unvarnished truth behind his tightly crafted novels. This is a writer who delivers the dark notes of beaten humanity in such a way that there is hope. In The World Made Straight, Travis Shelton comes from nothing, on the cusp of manhood in an unforgiving North Carolina mountain community, where drug-dealing is a viable livelihood, in this hardscrabble region with few opportunities outside of one’s own wits. It is the glimmer of something more that drives him to prove himself to his rough-hewed, hard-nosed father. Travis seeks to better himself after one fight too many; he leaves the tobacco fields on his family’s land and presents himself at the trailer of a local named Leonard, who is both drug-dealer and mentor, in that he is the only one in Travis’ sphere who, at one time, amounted to anything, though fate made it short-lived. Under Leonard’s influence, Travis pursues his high school GED, while shouldering the fall-out of the one false move he made, when he riled the shackles of local heavy-weight, Carlton Toomey, when he trespassed on his land. These are mountain characters who play by their own lawless rules, in a landscape where it’s every man for himself. In a climate still stinging from the horrors of the Civil War, the characters are born beneath the shadow of the ties that atavistically bind them, albeit through a sense of random tribal placement that haunts this story in an unfolding mystery, the impact of which the characters are not completely aware, until the looming puzzle work fits. It is a small world, in The World Made Straight, but it is universal in implication. Self-worth, justice, revenge, and hope against all odds flavors this story, which ends in notes of satisfaction and just deserves. ( )

A fired school teacher, a runaway teenager, a pill popping middle aged floozie all team up for this southern tale in the mountains of North Carolina. There is a link to a true story about murder during the Civil War in 1863. Did not like end but expected it. ( )

I wasn't a huge fan of this book. Not too impressed with the writing and there were a lot of underdeveloped stock characters. ( )