Gather Her Round

I haven't been as taken by a series of books and a writer's abilities as I have Bledsoe and his Tufa novels in quite some time. There's something about the world Bledsoe has created in his fictional Cloud County and this race of displaced fairies, the Tufa, which makes me desperate to know more. I want to know all their secrets!

In the Tufa books, Bledsoe has a whole people to take stories from, a sort of Spoon River Anthology of backwoods rural folk. There's no central character to his stories, usually. Instead, the community of Needsville and the Tufa people become the protagonist. This means that Bledsoe can approach the community from any angle. There is a multitude of characters that can grace his pages, and endless wealth of stories to tell.

In GATHER HER ROUND, the fifth outing in Cloud County, the community of Tufa have been struck by a tragedy: a monster pig, bred and raised domestically but released and gone feral, has killed one of their own. Hard to think a catalyst like this could turn into a love story, but the Tufa say that all songs are love songs.

Like the other books, Bledsoe's prose is tight and effortless. It compels you to read more. His affection for his characters is evident, and his grasp on the community as a whole is total. The greatest travesty is that it takes a year (or more) for a new Tufa novel to emerge from this fertile landscape he's created and I'm stuck waiting, desperate for the next one, the images and ideas of the most recent book plaguing me like an earworm that gets stuck in your head and leaves you humming the same song for weeks.

All of these books are fantastic. GATHER HER ROUND is no exception, a five-star novel in every way, shape, and form. Alex has said that the sixth trip through Cloud County is on its way. I will have to wait patiently for it to arrive, because I'm sure it will be another must-read novel.