Waters Run Wild

"Andrea Fekete has one of the sharpest ears and most deft hands at re-creating Appalachian dialect I have ever seen." Ann Pancake, author of Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley , Given Ground, and Strange as this Weather has Been, winner of the 2007 Weatherford Prize Award and a Kirkus Review Top Ten Fiction Book of 2007.

"Fekete's Waters Run Wild is beautifully written. The prose here sings with a poet's careful touch. Though the topics are as blunt as a baseball bat to the skull, the language never suggests such force. In fact, the narrative's nature, a predominantly woman's tale, seems to welcome Fekete's gentle hand. The most impressive sections are the ones where non-human characters come forth." -Ryan Stone, American Book Review

"With language of a poet and surety of an experienced storyteller, Andrea Fekete steps forth with a beautiful debut novel in the tradition of Lee Smith and James Still. Waters Run Wild is a rich and moving novel that reaches beyond its time and place to capture readers' hearts and imaginations. How exciting to have this powerful new voice among us." -Darnell Arnoult, author of Sufficient Grace and What Travels With Us.

"Filled with poetic language that reads like my grandparents' dreams, Waters Run Wild, Andrea Fekete's first novel, pays homage to such great southern and Appalachian works as Their Eyes Were Watching God and Storming Heaven. Her characters are at once fresh and traditional, the details of setting authentic yet original; and her protagonist is both naive and wise. The plot moves spontaneously and guilelessly like life in West Virginia's hills during the days of coal company stores, scrip and early union activity. Here's one to rival the classics of Appalachian literature. -Ron Houchin, author of The Man Who Saws us in Half and The Devil's Trill

"Waters Run Wild is a smooth ride over rough terrain: mine disasters, union busting, racially motivated violence, hunger and anger and deep-seated grief. Fekete's fiction marks the place where nature and human suffering meet, the voices of coal dust and rain joining with the general chorus of hard-pressed characters to create some of the most memorable mountain music this side of Lee Smith." -Trudy Lewis, author of The Bones of Garbo, for which she was awarded the Sandstone Prize in Short Fiction, and Private Correspondences, winner of the William Goyen Award for Fiction.

Andrea Fekete has a gift. Her debut novel, Waters Run Wild, reads more like poetry than prose and left this reader wanting more of her lyrical brand of storytelling. -James E. Casto Sunday Gazette-Mail