Silas House's trilogy on the lives of people in Kentucky coal country is one of the best-written series of novels I have seen in many a year. The writing is not only superb in structure but gripping and evocative without seeming forced, as so many modern novelists seem to be. His characters are not always likeable but are always interesting: they are real characters, as opposed to "types," and that makes all the difference in the world between a light read and something deeper. "Clay's Quilt," the third and last book in the series, focuses around the maturity and life of Anneth Sizemore's son, who is only four years old when his mother is murdered by the stepfather he never knew and doesn't remember. Haunted by her image and wanting resolution, he spends the bulk of his young adulthood searching for pieces of her to put together like the crazy quilts his granduncle Paul makes. Raised equally by his kindly aunt Easter and his wilder but equally kindly uncle Gabe, Clay matures into a deeply sensitive young man, inheriting that side of his mother without even realizing it.One of the best aspects of this book is the character of Alma, the estranged fiddler daughter of a powerful Baptist preacher who leaves her abusive, cocaine-snorting husband to live a life of relative freedom with her even wilder sister Evangeline, a singer in a honky-tonk. Alma's deep connection to music is as mysterious and unexplained as Clay's connection to his family and the area in which he was raised, and lives. Descriptions abound in the book of the way Alma's deep, intense focus on creating and/or performing music remove her completely from the physical plane and put her in the realm of pure spirit. Though Anneth and Easter both responded to the folk, pop and country music they heard in "Coal Tattoo" in an intense way, Alma's connection as both composer and performer kept me spellbound. This is as close as music comes to theism, and Silas House explains it in a way that is both logical and completely understandable, at least for her.Highly recommended.