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Debut Novel Features A Glimpse Of Post-Prison Life In Appalachia

How can you return to a place that was once home? That question is at the center of the new novel “Sugar Run” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill/2019). Protagonist Jodi McCarty was sentenced to life in prison for manslaughter when she was 17. Eighteen years later, she returns to her home in the Appalachian Mountains after her release, and on her way home Jodi meets and falls in love with a young mother named Miranda. She brings Miranda back to West Virginia and tries to get a fresh start while grappling with her past. 

Host Frank Stasio talks to author Mesha Maren about her debut novel, her upbringing in West Virginia, and her father’s work with incarcerated women. Maren is the 2018-2019 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She will be reading from her book at Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville on Jan. 8, at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro on Jan. 10, and at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill on Jan. 11

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Amanda Magnus is the executive producer of Embodied, a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships and health. She has also worked on other WUNC shows including Tested and CREEP.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.