Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote "The Underland" -- and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it's best to let the uncanny house and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling go to rot ... Opal is a lot of things--orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier--but...

While Cole alternately attempts romance with two troubled women, he also spends most of his time with the elderly patients at the nursing home where he works, desperately trying to ignore the decay of everything and everyone around him. Only when a disaster befalls these mountains is Cole forced to confront his fears and, finally, take decisive action-if not to save his world, to at least save himself.

"The author of South of Superior returns to that same territory and landscape with this story of a woman who, on the verge of losing the land and home that defines her, finds her way to a brighter future when she learns the power of giving to and accepting help from the community around her"--

"The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories is a collection about dishwashers, veterans, people who sleep outside, people who look through dumpsters, sandwich-makers, people who drive ice cream trucks, people who work in factories that manufacture pieces of metal, people who clean up after weddings, and other people who are not often the subject of books. It is very funny, tender-hearted, vivid, briefly and beautifully surreal at times"--