The Well Ain't Dry Yet

By Belinda Anderson

Twilight Dawn sits at the quilt frame in her living room, creating something whole from the scraps people bring of their lives. She opens The Well Ain't Dry Yet, Then steps aside to allow her... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0941092437
• ISBN13: 9780941092432
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Mountain State Press
• Length: 155 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Close to Home

This is a touching book with realistic characters that could almost be our neighbors or friends. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this book is the ability of each character's tale to stand on its own, but also work together as one book or "novel." Anderson is a very talented writer whose work will indeed delight her readers. She is truly one of the most memorable writers of Appalachian fiction as well as one of the most talented writers I have ever known. Her work is very touching and her characters' tales tug at our heart's strings and invite us to feel something for someone we have never met before. But a closer look shows that these characters may not be such strangers at all. Their pain is so real and so familiar.A great work, certainly meant for the shelf or even the coffee table of all frequent readers of fiction.

Well Ain't Dry Yet, newspaper review

If you feel a little guilty after reading `The Well Ain't Dry Yet 'you were probably raised to believe eavesdropping is impolite. Sure, eavesdropping on the lives of fictional characters may not seem such a crime-after all, we do it all the time with books, TV, films, etc. But there's something about the characters and settings of Belinda Anderson's collection of eighteen short stories that just might fool your conscience. We know these characters as people before even turning the first page. They are our friends, our enemies, our neighbors, our relatives and sometimes even ourselves. We wouldn't be surprised to find them in line with us at the grocery store or sitting two pews down from us at church. And like any community, Anderson's characters pass through one another's lives (stories) just as easily as the people they remind us of pass through our own. For instance, if you don't currently have a cranky, troublesome neighbor like Mr. Wood from the story `Rainbow Ranch', you either have before or one day will and can take a tip on how to deal with him now. Or if you haven't yet been run off the road by a de facto member of the crazy old lady drivers club, who meet monthly in the story `Delivery', count yourself lucky and keep both eyes on the road when driving near the Princeton Cracker Barrel. And though you probably haven't driven around for years with your dead sister's ashes taking up space in your trunk, you can probably sympathize with the long-standing jealousy leading the main character of `Hauling Evelyn' to do so. Some of Anderson's tales take on a dark subtext, such as `Marital Bliss', or infuriate you at the pure selfishness of people, as the story `Junior' does. Ultimately, though, even these stories remain hopeful that a better day is just around the corner. `The Well Ain't Dry Yet' is cross-section of life as we know it in West Virginia. Anderson's characters feel as though they were living their lives before we opened the book and will go on living them after we've closed it again. She's merely allowed us to eavesdrop on them for a little while, with perhaps a little guilt for having done so. This is Anderson's true accomplishment.(This review originally appeared in the Reader's Corner weekly column of the West Virginia Daily News, April 1, 2002 edition.)

Real Folks: Some Funny, Some Not

In The Well Ain't Dry Yet, prize-winning author Belinda Anderson shares with her audience her insider's eye about a collection of people who come from the hills of West Virginia, but who could have come from just about anyplace where the people have spunk and care about each other. Characters in The Well Ain't Dry Yet, such as quilter Twilight Dawn Johnson, who puts bits of other people's lives in perspective to patch together a lifetime of memories and hopes in each quilt for her friends and neighbors, remind us of ourselves and our neighbors at our best and funniest moments.