Nothing Gold Can Stay

About the Book

Beginning on a small tobacco farm in North Carolina shortly after World War II and ranging to the Smoky Mountains, South Carolina's Grand Strand, Charleston, Richmond, and beyond, Nothing Gold Can Stay, which borrows its title from the title of a Robert Frost poem, is a novel of childhood innocence, an inward journey, betrayal, lost friendship and lost love.

The novel is narrated by three of its principal characters: Jamey, a farm boy who journeys from an idyllic childhood into the world of adulthood and its confusing choices; Mike, Jamey's childhood hero, a mill worker and World War II veteran who longs to be off the mill floor and out in the mountains he loves; and Jennyree, his bored and restless wife, who is Jamey's older cousin.

About the Author

Steve Beck, a former instructor in writing and world literature, has been a carpenter, shrimper, and leather craftsman. He has traveled in Europe, Mexico and Central America. He lives and writes in southeastern North Carolina, and enjoys visiting southern coastal cities, particularly Georgetown and Savannah, where parts of this book were written. He likes cats, enjoys gardening, and listens to jazz and blues. Nothing Gold Can Stay is his first published novel. He is currently working on a second novel set in rural North Carolina and a nonfiction book on prostate cancer.