Donald Harington è stato un importante autore americano le cui opere sono ambientate spesso nella città fittizia di Stay More, nelle Ozark Mountains, ispirata dalla sua infanzia. Nonostante la quasi totale perdita dell'udito in giovane età, è riuscito a catturare e ritrarre magistralmente il linguaggio e lo spirito unici degli abitanti dell'Ozark. Sebbene acclamato da molti come uno dei più grandi scrittori contemporanei d'America, i suoi romanzi rimangono notevolmente inesplorati dal grande pubblico. I critici celebrano il suo corpus di opere incredibilmente originale e distintivo, definendolo un continente da scoprire nella letteratura americana.
Corrupt politicians of Stay More, Arkansas, frame Nail Chism for rape and sentence him to death in 1914, while Viridis Monday, an artist trained in Paris, draws trial sketches and decides that Chism is not guilty.
Jacob and Noah Ingledew trudge 600 miles from their native Tennessee to found Stay More, a small town nestled in a narrow valley that winds among the Arkansas Ozarks and into the reader's imagination. The Ingledew saga - which follows six generations of 'Stay Morons' through 140 years of abundant living and prodigal loving - is the heart of Harrington's novel. Praised as one of the year's ten best novels by the American Library Association when first published, this tale continues to captivate readers with its fusion of lyricism and comedy.
Real news is a rare commodity in Stay More, Arkansas, but twelve-year-old Dawny -- inspired by his hero Ernie Pyle -- finds enough local color to keep the townsfolk reading his weekly newspaper, The Stay Morning Star. One fixture of the paper is Dawny's regular report on the war between the Allies and the Axis, two roving bands of boys and girls whose fledgling identifies are reflections of the global battles of World War II. Fighting with sticks and spears, and competing in scrap drives and verbal jousts, the children who call themselves "Japs" and "Nazis" know their true enemies to be the "Allies", who are also the town bullies: Sog Alan, Larry Duckworth, and Jim John Witter.But the tenor of these games changes as developments bring the world's war closer to home: the crackle of the town's first radio delivers bad news on a daily basis, and a native son dies on Iwo Jima. For the first time ever, an airplane darkens the skies over Stay More, and soldiers occupy the isolated hills in training for an invasion of Japan. As the ways of outsiders seep into the tiny hamlet's routines, the texture of rural life is irrevocably changed. By turns comic, sad, and violent, When Angels Rest is a masterful work, part American tall tale, part hillbilly Paradiso.
Harington turns to the insect world of his Ozark town of Stay More. The cockroach community perambulate on gitalongs and apprehend their environment through sniffwhips. Maidens dance to the scents and sounds of the bewitching Purple Symphony of early evening. The faithful attend prayer meetings - the exalted Lord is Man, of the Holy House, (so called because when He's drunk He shoots holes in the walls with His guns). Meet our hero Squire Sam Ingledew, an intrepid fighter, philosopher, and leader, afflicted by deafness - and by acute bashfulness in the presence of females. Meet the lovely Letitia Dingletoon, who lives with her Maw, Paw, and forty-two siblings in an old log, and is in a fair way of losing her virginity. The cast of characters is rounded out with a few mammals, and mythological critters too. There is cliff-hanging action, there is merrymaking. So come visit, and stay more in this fanciful irreverent underworld.