Short summary: Amy Greene's first novel, BLOODROOT, is a multigenerational saga set in the heart of Appalachia that centers on a young girl raised by her grandmother on remote Bloodroot Mountain, and the legacy of place--and madness--that her twin children inherit. It's a stunning fiction debut about the legacies—of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and heartbreak—that one family wrestles with across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.

Publisher’s summary: Told in a kaleidoscope of voices, Bloodroot is at once a moving exploration of familial love and the story of an incendiary romance that consumes everyone in its path: Myra Lamb, a wild young girl with mysterious “haint blue” eyes who grows up on remote Bloodroot Mountain; her grandmother, Byrdie Lamb, who protects Myra fiercely and passes down “the touch” that bewitches people and animals alike; the neighbor boy who longs for Myra but is destined never to have her; Myra’s children, who must reckon with all that they have inherited from their mother; and John Odom, the young man who tries to tame Myra but meets with disaster. With grace and unflinching verisimilitude, Amy Greene brings these characters—the people of her native Appalachia—vividly to life in an evocative, astonishing tour de force.
Amy Greene is a student in Vermont College's low residency undergraduate degree program. She grew up and still lives in the foothills of East Tennessee's Smoky Mountains with her husband and two children, where the culture and traditions of Appalachia influence her writing. 

Reviews and Endorsements:

Wally Lamb: Amy Greene's Bloodroot can stand proudly beside Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Jeannette's Walls's The Glass Castle, two works which likewise examine the isometric push of the human spirit against the immovable forces of tyranny and poverty.  Greene's novel has everything I savor in fiction: flawed but sympathetic characters, a narrative as unpredictable as it is engaging, and a setting rendered with such a vivid palette of local color detail that you'd swear you were there.

Jill McCorkle: In Bloodroot, her brilliant debut novel, Amy Greene has woven a tapestry of voices and lives so rich and intricate that each and every storyline holds the reader spellbound.  It is a story of generations and the place that gave them birth, a story of love and loss, and sacrifice and forgiveness.  The voices ring as true and intimate as any I have ever heard and yet, every time I thought I knew exactly where I was going, there was a turn and a shift that startled and surprised me.  From page one I was hooked.  Hats off to Amy Greene, an immensely talented writer.  I can't wait for the next one.   

Ron Rash: Amy Green is a born storyteller who depicts the voices and folkways of Appalachia with both eloquence and verisimilitude. Bloodroot is a striking debut by a gifted writer

Arthur Golden: “Bloodroot is a marvel of a first novel, its world deftly conjured, with a mood and magic all its own. I don’t know what captivated me more, the vividness of its voices or its evocation of a corner of the American landscape both foreign and familiar—but I was riveted from start to finish.”