Winner of the Texas Institute of Letters' Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction
by Heath Dollar
Published 05/25/23
Old Country Fiddle orbits around the lives of an eccentric cast of characters from the Texas Hill Country. A roadside flag salesman profits from a neighborhood culture war. A professional congratulator enters a kolache-eating contest to impress a former kolache queen. A closet agnostic tries to dodge going to church with her mother, and the publisher of a Czech-Tex newspaper, using a walker called “the Silver Stallion,” delivers papers to the residents at the nursing home where he lives. These stories, which are told with a Texas drawl, cover a wide range of emotional territory and touch on themes that go far beyond the county line.
“In Old Country Fiddle, Heath Dollar’s comic plots and characters merge the Old South with the New South in his humorous stories set in Waylon County. Dollar’s work punches the gut with a Raymond Carver working class poignancy that intersects with the Southern grotesque of Flannery O’Connor. Heath Dollar is a writer to watch.”
“Old Country Fiddle transports you to a unique and delightful Texas community. Heath Dollar entices you into this rural setting with exquisite ease, then unspools one captivating story after another, each more enchanting than the others. Once you befriend these vibrant characters, you won't want to leave them behind.”
“Dollar’s stories are as wistful as they are joyful, as satirical as they are weighty, with characters as unique in their pursuits as they are universal in their longing. In a manner reminiscent of Tagore’s stories on the common man in India, Dollar brings into vivid relief the lives of so many who would otherwise remain invisible amidst the Texas Hill Country.”
