On this West Virginia Morning, three years ago, a Kentucky writer named Robert Gipe debuted his first novel, “Trampoline”, about a young girl growing up in Appalachia. Authors and literary fans across the region hailed it as one of the most important books to come out of our region in recent years. But the topics Gipe writes about aren’t easy — a parent’s drug addiction and the environmental wreckage left behind by strip mining.
Now, the main character, Dawn Jewell, is back in Gipe’s second novel, a sequel called “Weedeater”, which is also the name of one of the main characters. Gipe speaks with Roxy Todd, whom he told many of the ideas for both the book and the character Weedeater came from real life.
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