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Description
Mary Ann Taylor-Hall’s highly acclaimed first novel, Come and Go, Molly Snow, introduces us to Carrie Marie Mullins, a gifted Kentucky bluegrass fiddler and singer in the Hawktown Road band. After moving to Lexington to develop her talents, Carrie becomes infatuated with the band’s leader, Cap Dunlap. Her romantic distraction prevents Carrie from saving her five-year-old daughter, Molly, when she careens down the driveway and is killed by a truck. Overwhelmed with grief, Carrie breaks down.
Cap finds Carrie in this state of distress and takes her to Ona and Ruth Barkley, two elderly sisters living in an old farmhouse. It is on the sisters’ farm that Carrie is able to slowly come to terms with her heartache and guilt over Molly’s death. As she picks up the pieces of her shattered life, Carrie draws on the two women’s friendship, her inner strength, and finally, the healing power of music.
Mary Ann Taylor-Hall is the author of How She Knows What She Knows About Yo-Yos, a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year, and the recently published At The Breakers: A Novel. Come and Go, Molly Snow was chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discovery selection in 1995.
"Lush and loaded as a bluegrass lick. . . . Come and Go, Molly Snow is as contagious as the music it describes."—Philadelphia Enquirer
"Music spills out of this story. . . . The language is fresh, strong, and as appealing as Carrie Mullins."—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
"Recommended reading. . . . One's interest is consistently held by the sheer wealth of feeling that the author's mellow prose sets flowing through the pages."—New Yorker
"A remarkable first novel. . . . [Carrie's] passion fills this novel with lyrical intensity. Her spirit leaps from the narrative like an inspired improvisation."—People
"In writing of great beauty and honesty, Taylor-Hall has achieved that rare thing, a genuine evocation of a mother's grief. One reads this novel with a kind of dull ache in the chest."—New York Newsday
"This book is more finely crafted than a wooden instrument and more deeply honest than a mountain song. It picked me up and won't let go of me. . . . it made me even more in love with the world."—Pam Houston
"There's music in Come and Go, Molly Snow . . . but something grander, too, something almost sublime: the song of a woman's loss and pain, the song of her redemption."—Los Angeles Times
"This vernacular and gorgeous book very simply and without frills takes it all on, from the hilarious to the shattering, and leaves you with a lingering, hard-to0place tune in your ears."—Elle
"Mighty fine. . . . Mary Ann Taylor-Hall's real achievement in her first novel is to bring us inside a grieving woman's mind and enrich us with her grief."—Washington Post Book World
"Exquisite . . . As in Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World, the events of this story are searing, but the writing is like a plaintive, unforgettable song. . . . Not to be missed."—Publisher's Weekly
"Taylor Hall’s book, as it turns out, is like those golden peaches, to be savored time and time again."—Journal of Appalachian Studies
Publication Date
2009
Publisher
The University Press of Kentucky
Place of Publication
Lexington, KY
ISBN
9780813192161
eISBN
9780813159911
Keywords
Kentucky, Kentucky novels, Kentucky fiction, Bluegrass music
Disciplines
Literature in English, North America
Series
Recommended Citation
Taylor-Hall, Mary Ann, "Come and Go, Molly Snow: A Novel" (2009). Literature in English, North America. 58.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_north_america/58
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