Böcker av Kirk Ward Robinson

In a sun baked southern town near the famous Appalachian Trail, where the genteel traditions of the past are giving way to violence and greed, a four-year-old girl is abandoned by her mother, setting in motion a drama that will ripple through years and lives to come.In Book Two of The Speaks Saga, Blaize Speaks, Timewall's fiery mother must navigate toward young adulthood in rural Appalachia as a ward of the foster care system, struggling against abuse and cruelty to preserve her identity and independence while desperately clinging to a last spark of innocence, the only thing that will prevent her from becoming what she most fears.At once poignant and tragic, Blaize's journey forces her to make irreconcilable choices, revealing along the way the history of the people and the place that her son Timewall will eventually be born to.

The Appalachian Trail, that celebrated and often idealized 2000-mile footpath between Maine and Georgia, taunts the imaginations of those who have never hiked it from end to end, and haunts the memories of those who have. Kirk Ward Robinson, trail name "Solo," had already completed three southbound thru-hikes of the Appalachian Trail when he returned in 2021 for a fourth, northbound this time.After his third southbound thru-hike in 2018, Robinson hadn't planned to return to the trail again until 2028; but then reeling from a personal loss, the Covid pandemic, and an encroaching sense of mortality, he returned just three years later, at the age of sixty-two, to test himself once again on an Appalachian Trail that had grown to 2193.1 miles in length.Through journal entries and lively prose, Robinson explores mortality, friendship, tradition, and obsession in a day-by-day narrative that is often humorous, always honest, and lays bare the reality of the Appalachian Trail during a journey that he believes was worth every drop of sweat and blood.Final Notes from the Field: Northbound on the Appalachian Trail, the third and final installment in Robinson's Notes from the Field series, pushes the boundaries of age and expectation while recounting twenty years of adventure on the Appalachian Trail. See also Volumes I and II of the series:Notes from the Field: A Diary of Journeys Near and FarMore Notes from the Field: Southbound on the Appalachian Trail and Other Journeys

Twice named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books, Kirk Ward Robinson is back with The Latter Half of Inglorious Years, his first novel since the acclaimed The Appalachian.An untimely death and a mysterious manuscript propel an under-motivated 37-year-old blogger beyond his personal and creative boundaries in a journey that threatens to expose literary secrets as bleak as they are beautiful.Joplin Dean doesn't ask much of life. He subsists on income from a mediocre blog while his assertive girlfriend pursues goals that might just leave him behind. His placid existence is upended when a family tragedy reunites him with his estranged younger sister, whose carefree dynamism forces him to question his own sense of self. When Joplin discovers a manuscript left behind by his father, a failed author, both he and his sister are thrust into existential crises. Following divergent paths, they navigate the very nature of creativity and obsession as they are led inexorably toward the identity of their father's mysterious literary ingénue, Clarissa.Exactly who is she? And do they really want to know?