A carpet of white flowers pushed aside to reveal long, thick roots that look like fingers and bleed crimson sap. And in that single image, repeated at different times by different people but always in the same place, up the slopes of Bloodroot Mountain, you have the essence of Amy Green's story: fecundity and purity, flesh and blood, timelessness and decay.

Bloodroot is the story of Myra Odom, nee Lamb, as told by her grandmother, her best childhood friend, her son, her daughter, her self and, eventually, surprisingly, her husband. The story begins with Myra's grandmother, Birdie, telling the story of her life, lived among wild mountain wise women, beset with a curse placed on her by a great aunt. How she met her husband and how they buried four of their five children. The only one that lived to productive adulthood (three died of diphtheria as small children, one as a very young man) was Cleo, who also died young, leaving her daughter Myra to her parents care. Contrasted with Birdie is Doug Cotter, who grew up on the mountain with Myra, his only childhood friend. Doug knows and owns his love for Myra from his earliest memories, likening her to the wild, untamed horse his family keeps, as much a part of the mountain as the bloodroot, the pine trees, the spring. Birdie and Doug together paint a picture of poverty and love, family and home, growth through despair.

The next section of the book are the stories of Myra's twins, Johnny and Laura who live on the mountain in a state of near-feral isolation. They talk about how they are part of the mountain and how the mountain and their mother are almost one in the same. They remember a time when Myra spoke to them and cared for them, but that time is years past and she is now something of a wraith, almost entirely silent, neglecting them to wander the mountain. They are eventually found, of course, and placed in foster homes while Myra, gripped with animal madness, is sent to a sanitarium in Nashville. Johnny and Laura continue their journey into adulthood in the shadow of the mountain that absorbed their mother, laboring under the same curse as Myra, Cleo, and Birdie.

When at last Myra speaks for herself, it's as a woman who has clearly lost touch with reality and is welcoming the transition from woman to wild thing. She speaks proudly of drinking from streams, then urinating freely on the ground to return the water to where it came from. She no longer thinks of her children by their names, but by how the mountain makes them look: girl, boy, tall, strong, yellow in pollen, lacy with shadows. Eventually she tells the story of leaving the mountain for what she thought was the love of a beautiful, if not good man. And then the story of her grief at separation from her home and his rage at her inability to crush her own wild spirit. Stories of bad choices and domestic abuse are a dime a dozen, but Greene's characters shine through. You question their choices but you never disbelieve their voices.

Eventually Greene shows a portion of Myra's husband's perspective which became crushing in its gravity while giving the reader a deep sense of solace. Greene is a master storyteller, using the peculiar dialect of East Tennessee to create distinct voices that immediately engender care. From the description of "haint blue" eyes to the phase "I don't care to" meaning yes, this novel is pure East Tennessee, a moonshine distillation of Appalachia. It is remarkable, compelling, and wrenching. It burns on the way down but warms you completely, shocking and intoxicating.