Josh Weil: the New Valley June 14, 2009

Set in the hardscrabble hill country between West Virginia and Virginia, 'The New Valley' is populated by characters striving to forge new lives in the absence of those they have loved. Told in three varied and distinct voices--from a soft-spoken beef farmer struggling to hold himself together after his dad's suicide; to a health-obsessed single father desperate to control his reckless, overweight daughter; to a mildly retarded man who falls for a married woman intent on using him in a scheme that wounds them both--each novella is a vivid examination of Weil's uniquely romanticized relationships. As the men struggle against grief, solitude and fixation, their desperation leads them all to commit acts that bring both ruin and salvation.