Icy Sparks
Authors: Gwyn Hyman Rubio
Icy Sparks
“Rubio tells an entertaining and absorbing storyâ¦vivid and unforgettable.”
âThe New York Times Book Review
“Heartbreaking and absurdly funny.”
âOrlando Sentinel
“It's always a pleasure to discover a first-time novelist who writes with depth, wit and empathy. Gwyn Hyman Rubio is such a find.
Icy Sparks
is a triumph of heart and humor.”
âSt. Paul Pioneer Press
“[Rubio's] fictional materials are affliction and persecution and out of them she fashions a legacy of joyâ¦a significant addition to the literature of Appalachia, and the world.”
âLouisville Courier Journal
“Impressiveâ¦poeticâ¦universally appealing.”
âThe Denver Post
“A triumph of hearth and humorâ¦Gwyn Hyman Rubio writes with depth, wit, and sympathy.”
âLexington Herald Leader
“[Rubio's] first novel is remarkable.”
âPublishers Weekly
“Rubio's big-hearted first novel features Icy Sparksâ¦[who] wins the love and respect of the reader. For all collections where there are tender hearts.”
âLibrary Journal
“
Icy Sparks
is a very touching novel that brings forth feelings of love, laughter, and sadness.”
âKentucky Monthly
“Rubio displays sensitivity and promiseâ¦her use of dialect gives the story a lively authentic feel.”
âThe Raleigh News and Observer
“Intriguingâ¦The characterizations are so well done a reader might feel [the characters] are personal friends.”
âMacon Telegraph
“What a grand person Icy Sparks is! What a wonderful book her story makes! The pages of this novel almost turn themselves as the narrative glides gracefully from sorrow to sorrow, from joy to joy. Gwyn Hyman Rubio is a marvelous writer. Too grateful to envy, I admire and applaud her triumph and hope that everyone will share it with me.”
âFred Chappell, author of
Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You
“
Icy Sparks
speaks to us in an entirely new voice, painfully wise and wonderfully peculiar. In her original first novel, Gwyn Rubio makes us see that the tics and noises her remarkable heroine can't suppress are the pure expressions of a brave and lively spirit.”
âFrancine Prose, author of
Hunters and Gatherers
“
Icy Sparks
is a work of imagination, about being different in a world whose difference brings separation and pain. Icy, in 1950s Appalachia, finds community with others who also don't fit in and acquires an outlook that is wise, serious, and yet comic.”
âLoyal Jones, author of
Reshaping the Image of Appalachia
“A most original work of fiction.
Icy Sparks
is an important contribution to the literature that helps us know the emotional realities of wounded people. It is also one of the few novels of the Appalachian region that goes beyond the description of external reality and places the reader in direct touch with the interior lives of its characters. Brilliant.”
âGurney Norman, author of
Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories
“Gwyn Hyman Rubio twists together her dark and comic visions to create a world so marvelous and strange that it takes one's breath away. Her subject is the entanglements of order and disorder in a rural Kentucky setting of the 1950s, and she turns them upside down in a way that challenges our own definitions of where and how we live. She is an extraordinary writer.”
âStephen Dobyns, author of
The Church of the Dead Girls
PENGUIN BOOKS
ICY SPARKS
Gwyn Hyman Rubio is a fiction writer whose short stories have been anthologized and published in literary magazines around the country. She is a winner of the Cecil Hackney Award as well as a recent recipient of grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She lives in Berea, Kentucky.
G
WYN
H
YMAN
R
UBIO
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,
London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182â190 Wairau Road,
Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 1998
Published in Penguin Books 1999
Copyright © Gwyn Hyman Rubio, 1998
All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works: “Tune Me For Life” from
God the Supreme Musician
by Sri Chinmoy. By permission of Aum Publications. “Which Side Are You On?” by Florence Reece. © Copyright 1946 by Stormking Music Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Rubio, Gwyn Hyman.
Icy Sparks / Gwyn Hyman Rubio.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-1012-0018-6
I. Title
PS3568.U295I25 1998
813'.54âdc21 98â2829
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Para mi compañero, Angel
In memory of Rachel
O MasterâMusician
Tune me for life again.
The awakening of new music
My heart wants to become.
My life is now mingled
In ecstasy's height.
âS
RI
C
HINMOY
I am grateful to the Kentucky Arts Council, The Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences for their support.
I feel fortunate to have Susan Golomb as my agent. From the very beginning, she has believed in my work and stood by me. Her relentless faith in my writing has kept me going.
My gratitude also goes to my editor, Jane von Mehren, whose talent, intelligence, enthusiasm, and, above all, calming presence have buoyed me during these past two years. She is a woman of class and kindness.
Thanks to Gabriel Geltzer, Jane's assistant, for being both efficient and pleasant. I am thankful to have received excellent help from Dave Cole, my copy editor, and to have benefited from the artistic vision of Maggie Payette, the designer of my book jacket.
I am grateful for the support I received from the Kentucky Chapter of the Tourette Syndrome Association. Through their loving actions and concern, the members of the Kentucky Chapter demonstrated their belief in the unique essence of every human being. I am most appreciative of my friends Loyal Jones and Father John Rausch for their knowledge and sound advice about Appalachia. Thanks to Isaac and Anna H. Ison for their personal collection of Appalachian expressions,
A Whole 'Nother Language.
I want to thank Lisa Hiner for the hymnals and her lovely rendition of “Gathering Home.” To friends far away and to those nearby, I am thankful for their optimistic reassurance along the arduous pathway to publication.
Thanks to the M.F.A. Program at Warren Wilson College for nurturing both my spirit and my mind. A special thanks to the following teachers: Mary Elsie Robertson, for teaching me about courage; Francine Prose, for stressing the importance of humor; Joan Silber, for showing me the value of revision; Stephen Dobyns, for emphasizing the beauty of the creative process; Michael Ryan, for insisting upon concentrated effort; Charles Baxter, for offering hope.
Were it not for Dr. Michael Roy Lyles, for his guidance and concern so many years ago, this novel would not have been written. I will always value his friendship.
My heartfelt thanks go to my brother, Thomas Holt Hyman, for his continuous phone calls of support, and to my aunts, Mitzi Hyman and Dinah Hyman Waterman, for listening to me and encouraging me.
And, finally, I am especially indebted to my husband, Angel Rubio, for his friendship, patience, joyful devotion, and particularly for his thoughtful advice during the writing of this book. His delight in the publication of
Icy Sparks
has been as great as my own. He was the first person to believe totally in my writing; his confidence in my work has remained unwavering throughout the years. My work, my struggles, and my dreams are blessed because our paths are joined.