Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky

Leah's little brother, Jacob, disappeared when the pair were younger, a tragedy that haunts her still. When a grown man arrives at the non-profit Leah directs claiming to be Jacob, she is wrenched back to her childhood, an iridescent tableau of family joy and strife, swimming at the lake, sneaking candy, late-night fears, and the stories told to quell them.<br><br><i>Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky</i> is a wrecking-ball of a novel that attempts to give meaning and poetry to everything that comprises small-town life in central Kentucky. Listen: they are the ghost stories that children tell one another, the litter that skirts the gulley, the lines at department stores.<br><i><br>Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky</i> reads as though Anne Carson and Maggie Nelson wrote a more focused <i>Antwerp</i> and based it in central Kentucky. A gorgeous, haunting, prismatic jewel of a book.