Chris Offut’s characters often had to leave their Kentucky hills and woods, because nothing changes much there and everything is always the same, while others stayed there for the very same reasons, a deep sense of belonging rooted in those woods. His dialogs from people of few words are dense with all that is not said, pruning out all the obvious and concentrating on deeper meaning and cultural traits coming from the first settlers like the folk hero Daniel Boone to the white Indians nearly gone native.
