Our book club enjoyed the book and the characters. We found that we enjoy Ron Rash's writing. His descriptions kept it a fast paced read. The book has an ending that surprised us!!

Ron Rash writes poignantly about Madison county North Carolina. His prose is beautiful and is as much a love letter to that area as it is a love story. The setting of the story in a dark cove in the Great Smoky Mountains between the town of Mars Hill and Marshall creates an isolated place for a run away prisoner, guilty of nothing except his nationality in a foreign country during a time of war.
Brother and sister Hank and Laurel Shelton live on their family's deteriorating homestead. Hank, newly returned veteran has suffered an injury that would be debilitating to most men. But he has found a local girl that he wants to start a life with, but he has to repair the homestead so that Laurel can live there. Laurel hears a flute one day and discovers a homeless man who cannot speak. She brings him back to her home and he works for while assisting her brother. The town folk think Laurel is a witch and want nothing to do with her and they strive to stay away as much as possible from the cove. After a while, Laurel falls for the stranger despite his muteness, But the stranger is hiding a secret that could bring disaster on Laurel and Hank.

In the book THE COVE, the cove is a place where nothing good has ever happened to anyone who lived there. At this point in history, the end of World War I, can that be changed?

THE COVE begins with a mystery in the prologue, then soon after another mystery makes you forget about the first one.

Allow yourself to discover this mysterous story as it was meant to be discovered: as you read it. Don't read reviews. Don't even read the book flap or the back of the book until after you've read it.
THE COVE is an exceptionallly good book because it is mysterious. But I made the mistake of reading reviews of this book before I read it, and most of them revealed the solution to one of the mysteries. So I was deprived of the pleasure of slowly discovering the story as it was revealed. I might have given THE COVE five stars otherwise.

If you don't make that mistake, you'll love THE COVE.