Walking Toward Home

A South Carolina smalltown country store attracts a diverse group of neighbors who tell stories and impart wisdom that was earned the hard way. By turns humorous, satiric, and poignant, this new novel from one of the South’s leading writers is peopled by true individuals who have grown wise from experience. Chauncey Doolittle has suffered his losses and now lives alone in an old farmhouse on the side of a hill. Far from being lonely, however, he is a keen observer of his community’s doings: he is seen frequently at his cousin Kildee’s country store, listening to and telling tales that attempt to make sense of the world. Chauncey learns much from his friend Triggerfoot Tinsley, an independent cuss who gets into hilarious scrapes. Then there are Mattie Lou and Goldie, widow cousins who fish the days away while dispensing their storied wisdom on summer afternoons. Family connections run through the place like a flash of sparkling water, and the distant past is as immediate as the teller of the tale. All of Chauncey’s friends in this close community have been knocked low in some inevitable way but continue to press on, to care for the living and mourn the dead. Praise for Walking Toward Home“Kibler shows his mastery of a time and a place, an idiom and a people.” —Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek and Brave Enemies“James Kibler understands that traditional stories endure because they are always new; they furnish the joys both of discovery and of rediscovery.” —Fred Chappell, North Carolina poet laureate