In 2000, Oprah Winfrey selected Algonquin'â„¢s hard cover edition of Gap Creek for her Book Club. Now, a dozen years and more than one million copies later, we are proud to offer our first paperback edition of this enduring bestseller. Young Julie Harmon works 'Å’hard as aman,' they say, so hard that at times she'â„¢s not sure she can stop. People depend on her to slaughter the hogs and nurse the dying. People are weak, and there is so much to do. At just seventeen she marries and moves down into the valley of Gap Creek, where perhaps life will be better. But Julie and Hank'â„¢s new life in the valley, in the last years of the nineteenth century, is more complicated than the couple ever imagined. Sometimes it'â„¢s hard to tell what to fear most'the fires and floods or the flesh-and-blood grifters, drunks, and busybodies who insinuate themselves into their new life. To survive, they must find out whether love can keep chaos and madness at bay. Their struggles with nature, with work, with the changing century, and with the disappointments and triumphs of their unionmake Gap Creek a timeless story of amarriage.