Beloved Southern writer Ron Rash thrilled readers at Harper Library on Staurday, May
16 th when he joined us, virtually, for a discussion of his novel, The Caretaker. Rash’s
appearance was the third and final installation of FOLSOI’s 2026 NC Reads program.
UNCW history professor Jen LeZotte joined us in-person to shed light on the time
period of Rash’s book, set in the Appalachian Mountains of NC and TN during the
Korean War. Prof LeZotte spoke about fear and stigma surrounding the polio epidemic,
as well as the isolation and poverty that pervaded many Appalachian regions,
exacerbated by The Great Depression and the loss of men to WWII. The Korean War
also hit the region hard, LeZotte explained, as most of 1.5 million Americans
conscripted were rural and uneducated. LeZotte reminded us that there were no
communities for returning veterans at that time, nor any counseling or recognition of
PTSD.
Ron Rash told us that his uncle was a veteran of the Korean War who used to tell him
stories about hand-to-hand combat. Those gruesome images came back to Ron as he
wrote the opening scene of The Caretaker.
Ron revealed that he relies on visual imagery for all his novels. The Caretaker began
with the image of a young woman, dressed in mourning clothes, weeping in front of a
tombstone engraved with her name. In the original draft of his book, Ron wrote her as a
ghost. But as the character evolved with his writing, “Naomi” came to life as a poor,
determined Tennessee farmgirl with a big heart.
Much of the setting in The Caretaker was drawn from Ron’s memories of summers
spent on his grandparent’s farm near Blowing Rock. There was a cemetery near the
farm and when it was windy, wreaths and flowers would blow off the tombstones.
Young Ron would return them to the cemetery. Images from that time and place would
eventually materialize in his book.
In another revelation, Ron said that his protagonist, Blackburn Gant, did not even exist
in the first 5 or 6 drafts of his novel! Gant eventually came to represent goodness in the
face of hardship and cruelty.
“I wanted, more than anything, to write about a truly decent human being, in light of the
current cancel culture that plagues our times,” Ron told us.