Praise for COGAN’S WOODS by Ron Ellis
“Ellis recreates the tastes and sounds of rural America with scenes that…are kept fresh by his devotion to quiet, lovely detail.”
— Publishers Weekly
“The act of remembering is above all a celebration of cherished things—friendship and family, storytelling and nature, the physical senses, and the beauty of permanence existing right next to stunning impermanency. The brevity of such things in any individual’s life is all the more reason for noticing them, and celebrating them, as Ellis has done here so well.”
— Rick Bass, from the “Foreword” of Cogan’s Woods
“Cogan’s Woods is a wonderfully textured portrait of a father and son discovering each other and the deep forest in which they hunt. It makes me think of Harry Middleton, though Ellis’s voice is new and richly his own.”
— Nick Lyons
“With Cogan’s Woods, Kentuckian Ron Ellis has added a superb volume of prose to our permanent literature. Not many books I see do that. . . Cogan’s Woods is as well-seasoned a literary debut as I can recall reading.”
— Christopher Camuto, Gray’s Sporting Journal
“In 146 pages, our own Ron Ellis spins a magical memoir…For anyone who knows deep Kentucky—towns where people live and die in the same 50 square miles—the story will bring back bittersweet memories of forests before logging and general stores before Walmart.”
— Karen Samples, The Kentucky Enquirer
“Cogan’s Woods is the story of the boy Ellis was and the man he has become, a legacy he shares in words as crisp and beautiful as Cogan’s Woods once was.” — Carole Philipps, The Cincinnati Post
“Remembering is what Ron Ellis does so well in Cogan’s Woods. . . It is the honest life of simple pleasures, a universal human story, that makes this book memorable.” — Lou-Ann Crouther, Bowling Green (KY) Daily News
“A song of praise for a simpler life.” — Jeanne McDonald, Appalachian Life
“Like sunlight on stained glass, Cogan’s Woods illuminates the richness of memory.” —Vicki Prichard, Inside Your Town
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