Some authors can tell a sad story but render it beautiful. That’s what Bobi Conn observed when she started reading books while in graduate school at the age of 27.

I would take it a step further and count Conn herself among those authors.

Conn documented poignantly the harsh realities of her own life growing up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in her memoir, "In the Shadow of the Valley." The book took her 10 years to write. That’s a lot of reflection, a lot of pain, a lot of facing your demons head-on. It was a battle for survival — a battle that she won, but not without scars.

Now she continues the Appalachian journey of poverty and despair — but always with the distant hope of breaking free — in a fiction work, "Someplace Like Home," based on the story of her mother, Jenny, whose actions and attitudes so greatly defined the author.

To understand Jenny helps put the author’s own story in perspective. But to understand the characters, one first needs to understand the Appalachian setting, which offers physical beauty but represents hardship and isolation. Its residents are trapped, many unaware of the opportunities beyond its borders. A ticket out almost seems like a jailbreak.

Jenny has a mundane life. She is shy, not popular in school, a bit uncomfortable in her own skin. She eventually settles into a routine and a factory job. But she is a dreamer, keeping hope alive when she listens to music on the radio or feels the freedom of driving a fast car on an imaginary highway to another world.

She is smart but vulnerable, and prone to hook up with the wrong sort, figuring this is the best life has to offer. It’s all she knows — which leads her to Rob, a school dropout, out of work and involved in unsavory activities and alliances. She sees him as her Jimmy Dean. He shows Jenny attention and some affection.

Rob is trouble. At one point, he draws a knife. At another, he points a revolver at Jenny’s head. Yet the two get married — and initially live with Rob’s parents.

Jenny recalls, “We slept in the bedroom that was farthest from the staircase, and it had a window that faced the head of the holler. I’d lay in bed some mornings, looking at the field and the creek that cut through them. I couldn’t have imagined how I would run through those fields one day, how I would hide in that creek with my children. I didn’t know yet that there was something I should run from.”

As it turns out, predictably but unfortunately, Jenny’s journey into marriage and motherhood is heartbreaking and eye-opening. The author explores Rob’s violent behavior, his abuse of Jenny, and what kind of resolve it will take in her to break free.

Jenny’s daughter Charlie wrestles with her own identity shaped by the path of her mother and shows how actions and emotions traverse across generations.

Bobi Conn is an important storyteller, expert in her craft, whose work is informative and emotional, raw and real in its impact. In "Someplace Like Home," as well as her memoir "In the Shadow of the Valley," she paints a concise picture of a slice of America that many have heard about but not so many have experienced or even understood.

Readers looking for a brilliant family saga that will have them cringing with fear, rooting hard for our heroine, and marveling at a story, a destination, and a life with passion and purpose will do well to pick up "Someplace Like Home."

Conn says to her mother, the Jenny character, “I wanted to understand your story, and I knew it was worth sharing with the world … I hope you feel heard, appreciated and loved.”