This was an incredibly good book. It held my interest right from the start. Young couples these days have it easy for their first year of marriage compared to Julia and Hank.Could you last the whole winter with 6 cents to your name?

I agree with everything that's been mentioned in the other member's reviews. I was completely taken with this story from the first page. The author just grabs you and holds on, his beautiful descriptions are wonderful. I really felt like I was there. The character of Julie is drawn magnificently. How this author (a man) was able to write from her perspective just amazes me. The story moves at an amazing pace, too. The author has such control...very good. I laughed, I cried...every emotion was there, without any corniness or melodrama.

I've never been a big fan of the books on Oprah's book club, but this one was very good.

How did any of our forefathers survive? We think it's so hard with the high price of gas and utilities; most people in the United States don't know the meaning of hard times. Captivating.

This is an interesting story of a marriage--young people growing to intimacy through trials and tribulations. Very good.

I enjoyed reading this story about a strong woman, and the changes she sees in her husband. She stays with him even through hard and scary times.

I was in total of of the courage of the character julie in this book...simplicity is the underlying theme. WOW

This is an engrossing story of the first year in a young couple's marriage. They go through terrible hardship - I think this takes place just before the turn of the century and is very believable. It's an Oprah Book Club selection.

stayed up all night to finish

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From Amazon.com:
Robert Morgan's Gap Creek opens with one wrenching death and ends with another. In between, this novel of turn-of-the-century Appalachian life works in fire, flood, swindlers, sickness, and starvation--a truly biblical assortment of plagues, all visited on the sturdy shoulders of 17-year-old Julie Harmon. "Human life don't mean a thing in this world," she concludes. And who could blame her? "People could be born and they could suffer, and they could die, and it didn't mean a thing.... The world was exactly like it had been and would always be, going on about its business." For Julie, that business is hard physical labor. Fortunately, she's fully capable of working "like a man"--splitting and hauling wood, butchering hogs, rendering lard, planting crops, and taking care of the stock. Even when Julie meets and marries handsome young Hank Richards, there's no happily-ever-after in store. Nothing comes easy in Julie Harmon's world, and their first year together is no exception.

This was such a good book that once I had time to sit down and get into it, I couldn't put it down.

A story about a hardworking girl who has a lot of tragedy in her young life, how she survives and learns from it all.

The New York Times Book Review said "At their finest, his stripped-down and almost primitive sentences burn with the raw, lonesome pathos of Hank Williams's best songs." Very well put. This book was so well written. It's impossible not to empathize with these complex characters. A great read.

Great story.

excellant book

Oprah's book club book. Julie Harmon works hard, so hard that at times she's not sure she can stop. People depend on her. She is just a teenager when her brother dies in her arms. The following year, she marries Hank and moves to Gap Creek. Julie and Hank discover that the modern world is complex, grinding ever on without pause or concern for their hard work. To survive, they must find out whether love can keep chaos and madness at bay.

Great book. easy read. makes you thankful for the lives we live and take for granted.

This is a nice read.

sad parts, but a good book, set in the south, about a young girl who has a hard life and gets married and continues her hard life.

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