"History is a living and inescapable presence in the panoramic stories of Allegheny Front, where Matthew Neill Null brings his homeland of rural West Virginia vividly to life. In Null's telescopic narration, human and animal populations exist in precarious balance with a landscape ravaged by resource exploitation and failed enterprise. Bears propagate in abandoned strip mines and forage in town dumpsters to the delight of camera-toting locals ; a bald eagle torments the hunter who killed her mate ; an ambitious young scientist is forced to reckon with her past and present loyalities when a local man and his daughter interrupt her field research. With haunting lyricism, lush detail, and a keen ear for dialogue, Null creates a world simultaneously intimate and epic in scope." -- from publisher.