It’s easy to understand why Rhonda Browning White’s debut novel, Filling the Big Empty (Redhawk Publications 2024) was shortlisted for the 2022 Neilson Prize. The novel is a tour-de-force, relentlessly examining environmental issues in Appalachia. While never losing focus on a young couple’s relationship, the story drops readers into the horrors of mountaintop removal to extract coal, the […]