During World War II real news is a rare commodity in the hamlet of Stay More Arkansas. But twelve-year-old Dawny - inspired by his hero Ernie Pyle - finds enough local color to keep the townsfolk reading his weekly newspaper The Stay Morning Star. Dawny reports on the war between the Allies and the Axis two roving bands of boys and girls fighting with sticks and spears and competing in scrap drives and verbal jousts. But the tenor of these games changes as developments bring the world's war closer to home: the crackle of the town's first radio delivers frightening news from the outside world to the isolated village and a native son dies on Iwo Jima. For the first time ever an airplane darkens the skies over Stay More and soldiers occupy the remote hills in training for an invasion of Japan. As the ways of outsiders creep into the small town's routines the texture of rural life is irrevocably changed. Donald Harington's bittersweet tale reflects on the hilarity and calamity of childhood the isolation that remains in intimacy and the impending shadows of maturity that darken human nature. By turns comic sad and violent When Angels Rest is a masterful work part American tall tale part hillbilly paradise.
