Gap Creek Book by Robert Morgan

"Stripped-down . . . sentences burn with the raw, lonesome pathos of Hank Williams's best songs," in an Oprah's book club pick about married life in Appalachia (The New York Times Book Review). Young Julie Harmon works "hard as a man," they say, so hard that at times she's not sure she can stop. People depend on her to slaughter the hogs and nurse the dying. People are weak, and there is so much to do. At just seventeen she marries and moves down into the valley of Gap Creek, where perhaps life will be better.