In the opening chapter of “The Tulip Poplars,” a teenage Tom Foster arrives at a community dance upon his beloved mule, Daisy, and quickly finds a dance partner in his childhood friend, Maeve.

The two spend the night reeling and twirling to old-time Appalachian music. But Maeve is not the person Tom longs to dance with. That is his friend, Amos, who lives in the town orphanage.

But it is the early 1900s in eastern Kentucky, and open love between Tom and Amos is forbidden. Maeve also yearns for another — a young Black teen named Paschal — and that love, too, is taboo in this time and place.

Silas House’s newest novel is a sweeping exploration of forbidden love over a lifetime in the 20th century and how these four people try to build lives that conform to society’s expectations. His prose makes the readers feel each character’s longing as they make conventional choices and search for happiness. The four also take risks.

House explores faith, loyalty to friends and family, desire, race and class as the stories of Tom, Amos, Maeve and Paschal unfold. Tom is the central character, but each chapter focuses on an individual as he or she grapples with what it means to gamble and break barriers in search of love and happiness.

Even as these characters struggle with their emotions and desires, House wants his readers to know that gay people have always existed, even in the rural South. And that they long overcame societal barriers to be together, even when it comes at a great cost.

House might be as unfamiliar to readers in the American West as are the tulip poplar trees he writes about in the book. (Tulip poplars are native to the eastern United States and grow tall and sturdy, showering the landscape with bright yellow flowers in the spring and early summer.)

He is a bestselling author with 11 titles spanning multiple genres, including literary fiction, poetry and mystery. He is a two-time winner of the Southern Book Prize and a 2022 recipient of the Duggins Prize, a prestigious award for LGBTQ writers. House also served as Kentucky’s poet laureate from 2023 to 2025.

House’s prose is a thing of beauty as he offers warm descriptions of not only the four main characters but also the culture of Appalachia. The writer has never shied away from his roots and is proud to write about the language, the food and the hard work found in the fields and coal mines of his native Kentucky.

As the story unfolds, the characters find themselves questioning moral customs and religious teachings. It’s a theme that resonates for anyone raised within a strict religious faith.

Tom’s questioning of faith and love first occurs at that dance. His mother, who attends a fire-and-brimstone church, does not approve of dancing. As Tom links hands with Maeve to dance anyway, his eyes are searching for Amos across the room full of people stomping to the music.

“They were hollering and clapping, either clogging or at least moving their feet to the beat, and he couldn’t understand how anyone could see joy as sinful,” House writes in the opening scene. “Surely celebration could never be wrong. And shouldn’t the same be true of love? That’s what he believed, even as everything he had been taught his whole life whispered otherwise to him.”

House’s love for the natural world also shines through in the book as Tom fights to save a tulip poplar grove on the farm he inherited from his father. House plunges readers into cool, swift-moving rivers where the characters refresh their bodies or leads them deep into the Appalachian woods where the characters find solace among tall virgin timber.

The same challenges that confront the characters in “The Tulip Poplars” endure today, whether people are pushing to be accepted for who they love or fighting to preserve the country’s precious natural resources — including its people.

The Tulip Poplars

Author: Silas House

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Pages: 384

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