Only Love Can Break Your Heart

On this episode of Arts & Letters, we talk with writer and teacher Ed Tarkington. His first novel Only Love Can Break Your Heart, published by Algonquin Books in 2016, "happens in moments."

The book "explores the city limits of fictional Spencerville, its grassy fields and horse farms, Georgian style homes and stately colonial manses and its inhabitants filled up with guilty ghosts from the past."

Secrets, ghosts, old money gone bad, violence and malicious intent are all hallmarks of Tarkington’s story, set in mountains of Virginia. 

Tarkington currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee.

Support for this program was provided by the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Thanks to all the musicians who contributed songs for the show, including:

Amyjo Savannah

 Joey Kneiser and Kelly Smith