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    The Risen: A Novel
    The Risen: A Novel
    The Risen: A Novel
    Audiobook5 hours

    The Risen: A Novel

    Written by Ron Rash

    Narrated by Richard Ferrone

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash demonstrates his superb narrative skills in this suspenseful and evocative tale of two brothers whose lives are altered irrevocably by the events of one long-ago summer—and one bewitching young woman—and the secrets that could destroy their lives.

    While swimming in a secluded creek on a hot Sunday in 1969, sixteen-year-old Eugene and his older brother, Bill, meet the entrancing Ligeia. A sexy, free-spirited redhead from Daytona Beach banished to their small North Carolina town until the fall, Ligeia will not only bewitch the two brothers, but lure them into a struggle that reveals the hidden differences in their natures.

    Drawn in by her raw sensuality and rebellious attitude, Eugene falls deeper under her spell. Ligeia introduces him to the thrills and pleasures of the counterculture movement, then in its headiest moment. But just as the movement’s youthful optimism turns dark elsewhere in the country that summer, so does Eugene and Ligeia’s brief romance. Eugene moves farther and farther away from his brother, the cautious and dutiful Bill, and when Ligeia vanishes as suddenly as she appeared, the growing rift between the two brothers becomes immutable.

    Decades later, their relationship is still turbulent, and the once close brothers now lead completely different lives. Bill is a gifted and successful surgeon, a paragon of the community, while Eugene, the town reprobate, is a failed writer and determined alcoholic.

    When a shocking reminder of the past unexpectedly surfaces, Eugene is plunged back into that fateful summer, and the girl he cannot forget. The deeper he delves into his memories, the closer he comes to finding the truth. But can Eugene’s recollections be trusted? And will the truth set him free and offer salvation . . . or destroy his damaged life and everyone he loves?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 6, 2016
    ISBN9780062562920
    Author

    Ron Rash

    Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall, in addition to four prizewinning novels, including The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.

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    Reviews for The Risen

    3.5/5

    85 ratings12 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A bit of a family-based mystery involving two brothers who have had divergent trajectories in life after knowing, as teenagers, a wild, manipulative girl who disappeared. Told from the perspective of the alcoholic writer brother who has always been compared unfavorably to his older surgeon sibling. Their cruel, controlling grandfather, the town doctor, figures prominently. Not Rash's best, but a satisfying story.
    • 5/5
      This was a very enjoyable mystery with a satisfying ending.
    • 3/5
      The Matney boys, Bill and Eugene, first see Ligeia skinny dipping in their favorite trout fishing stream. She appears to the wistful Eugene to be as enigmatic as a mermaid and every bit as alluring. The counterculture comes vividly to life for the boys with the appearance of the self-styled Ligeia, a wild flower child from Florida sent to her fundamentalist uncle’s mountain home in hopes that the remote locale will tame her rebel ways. Soon she develops relationships with both boys, and before long has them pilfering their grandfather’s medicine cabinet to procure her next high.

      Fastfoward forty six years later, Ligeia’s corpse is recovered from a creek, raising questions about whether the brothers were somehow responsible. Eugene, who has since made a complete wreck of his life, seems a likely culprit to local authorities. Eugene knows he didn’t do it, but he’s not so sure about Bill who said he had dropped her off at the bus station.

      Narrated by failed writer Eugene, an alcoholic with a painful past, it's a profound exploration of one family and the forces that shaped and propelled them throughout their lives. It is also a murder mystery that ends with some unexpected twists. I've recently discovered Ron Rash's novels and believe they are all poignant and beautifully written.I



      TBR 1370
    • 4/5
      Great writer with a great writing style that flows. Story was good. If you look at the story as a mystery, the who in the who dunnit is pretty easy to figure out, the reason, not as easy. There was one item unsolved and left to the reader's imagination.
    • 3/5
      I'm afraid nothing he writes will ever be as good as Serena.
    • 5/5
      THE RISEN may not have been promoted as much as Ron Rash’s other books. I hadn’t heard of it until I found it two years after its publication. And what a find it turns out to be!Two brothers, Bill, a successful neurosurgeon, and Eugene, a failed writer and an alcoholic, learn that the body of an old acquaintance, Ligeia, has been discovered. Eugene tells the story of the summer 46 years ago when they met Ligeia and of their present predicament. Who killed her?This is my favorite of all Rash's books. It’s short but leaves quite an impact.
    • 4/5
      Not my favorite of Rash's novels, but a good read nonetheless. The descriptions of the setting are fantastic, characters are well defined, the story was a bit meh for me.
    • 4/5
      In Ron Rash's books, the evocative locations are always essential to the story. No exception here, where some of the more memorable scenes take place beside a cool mountain stream in the North Carolina mountains in 1969. This is a slim novel, but it's a story that will stay with me for a long time. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      The Risen is another Ron Rash novel that the prose just sings off the page. Rash never fails to disappoint me in his use of descriptive verse. He so easily transports me to the stage of his characters. It was as if I was sitting on that river bank soaking my toes in the icy waters of the mountain stream known as Panther Creek. The story itself is rather quiet and ambles along at a nice pace and then before you know it you have reached the end. Then I exhale in a long sigh because it is always bittersweet to come to the end of a story well told. The book is both a coming of age story and a murder mystery wrapped up in one neat package. The story revolves around two brothers, Eugene and Bill Matney, 16 and 20 respectively, and one pivotal summer in 1969. Bill is home from Wake Forest for the summer and he and Eugene have gone fishing after church, as they do every Sunday, when they meet Ligiea. Ligiea, 17 herself, has been exiled by her parents to her Uncle’s in rural Western North Carolina in an attempt to remove her from the drugs and counterculture of the 60s she has been involved in at Daytona Beach. For these young boys/men, she is a temptress. She is worldly to their innocence and Eugene is captivated by her. With her, he experiences alcohol, drugs and sex for the first time. Bill, is much less progressive, while at first he joins in, later, after his girlfriend visits, he under goes a metamorphosis. A sibling rivalry of sorts ensues and the brothers drift apart. Years later, Eugene is an alcoholic and his brother is a prominent surgeon in Asheville and though the physical distance between them is short, in reality, they are worlds apart. Then the unimaginable happens, a body is found near the spot where they fished that summer in 1969. The remains are identified as Ligiea’s. The police start asking questions. She can’t be dead, Eugene knows Ligiea was on a bus bound for Florida. I have had this book on my desk for over a month. I kept putting it off for others that were more pressing. Now I want to read it again. Great Stuff!
    • 4/5
      ****** very small possible SPOILER*******I first read Ron Rash last year with his book above the falls which I really liked. This book "The Risen" is a good story but it is quite short. It is almost as if the author either already had it written but it was around 100 pages and in order to make it a stand alone book, he had to plump it up with extra information, or he just ran out of steam with what to do with the story.The book is about two brothers, Bill- older and in college, and Eugene- younger and impressionable, who live with their mother and are beholden to their grandfather- the towns Doctor and a huge force to be reckoned with, living in a small town in N Carolina. In the summer of 1969, ( wasn't this a Brian Adams song?),while fishing on a deserted section of a creek they meet a new girl, Ligeia, who is more San Francisco than anything they have ever been exposed to. The girl has been sent to the town to live with her strict very religious aunt and uncle, because of some trouble she got in in her home town of Daytona Florida, and is now missing the sex and drugs lifestyle she had adopted. The girl has sex with each brother, but latches onto the younger one who is more easily manipulated. In the fall of 1969 she gets into trouble needs money and needs out of town fast. Bill and Eugene come to her rescue and she flees. Or does she?Jump to today.Bill is a hugely successful surgeon, and Eugene is a disgraced, divorced alcoholic, who own family won't speak to. While reading the paper one morning Eugene see that a body has been discovered that was buried at their old fishing spot.
    • 4/5
      A more gently told and currently (1970) set tale than most by Rash, one of my favorite writers (especially for "Serena" and his short stories). He is the truthteller and poet of the Appalachians and of western North Carolina. Here he invokes Thomas Wolfe, a writer whom he states must be read by the young, and I agree, having loved "Look Homeward Angel" in my teens but now, not much. This is a story of two brothers and the rivalry that seems to be most common between same gender, close in age. It also introduces the outside world in the form of a hippie girl, a "mermaid" they find in their swimming hole, who seduces both Bill and Eugene, with disastrous results. There's also a small mystery left unresolved, and the harsh tyrant usually found in Rash's fiction, the boys' grandfather. "Grandfather, he was a monster, wasn't he?"
    • 4/5
      It might have been the summer of love in most of the country, but 1969 in this small town was mostly passed over. But for two brothers, Eugene and his older brother Bill, this summer would change everything.First love, first sex, first drink, for young Eugene it was a summer he would never forget. The magic of this author is not just the southern settings which he is known for but that he gives his characters situations and problems that could be for anyone, anywhere. This is written very simply, but with much depth, of the characters and the situation. A grandfather who is a dictator and after their Father's death wants to run the lives of their mother and of both boys. The story is told from an older Eugene looking back and reevaluating what he know after a horrific discovery. Does the end ever justify the means? Does the tremendous service one does when older excuse mishaps of the past? So simply written but at the same time very complex. Rather ingenuous, especially Ina shorter paged book.So I loved this but feel the synopsis of the book almost gives too much away. Don't know why they do that. Anyway, think this book would make an interesting book discussion.ARC from publisher.