The Yonder Side of Sass and Texas

Raised deep in the Shawnee Hills amid hogback bluffs, a roundabout river, and unending family, two divergent sisters share a colorful journey: first through childhood in a place both blessed and cursed by the hybrid footprints of the Appalachia and Ozark regions surrounding it, and then into the world beyond, compelled by their shared wanderlust. Arkansas (Sass) and Texas MacTerptin gradually understand that the sheltered bluffs of their youth are vastly removed from the broad ground beyond, and they find themselves on a truly foreign journey, separated from familiarity by an ocean and realizing amid their travels the depth of native soil all over again.
Joanna Beth Tweedy's combination of both rural-homeland and poetic language will surprise and delight you as will the stories of two unforgettable sisters and their backwoods clan.


Tweedy has created a poetic pathway into her first novel. The lyric prose is a dance that never missteps across twenty-five tales all absolute in originality and sophistication. --Amy Sayre-Roberts

Joanna Beth Tweedy has conjured up a world as familiar as childhood memories and as strange as the Sahara. The prose crackles like a splash of water on a hot skillet and there's a surprise on every page. --Robert Hellenga