A Good Baby

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During the night of a storm, an Appalachian girl delivers a baby and disappears. The next morning, Raymond Toker finds the baby under a bush and takes to the mountain roads to find her a home. While Turner carries out his quest, the child’s father, Truman, with “teeth as rotten as his soul, ” drives his battered car along the same paths. Though critically acclaimed when first published by Knopf in 1990, and widely considered among Rooke’s best novels, A Good Baby has been unjustly forgotten. This beautiful new ReSet reissue brings attention to this fast, funny, frightening masterpiece.

AUTHOR

Leon Rooke

Leon Rooke is a novelist, short story writer, editor, and critic. He has published 28 books, nearly 300 short stories, and is the recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature.

Reviews

Praise for Leon Rooke and A Good Baby

“Rooke is one of the great post-Faulkner southern prose stylists … who breaks the rules, makes up new rules, fractures and twists the story form with breathtaking aplomb, while communicating a generosity of spirit and ‘joie de vivre’ that is endlessly attractive.”—GLOBE & MAIL

“A master … every word in [A Good Baby] becomes something other-than-it was.”—WASHINGTON POST

“Rooke has written a story in which everything is done, told and thought in an exuberant white heat … a backwoods Valhalla in which everyone is a god, demigod or devil, with larger-than-life passions and idiosyncrasies.”—LOS ANGELES TIMES

“Grim and raw and hilarious.”—THE NEW YORK TIMES