When I was a young South Carolina high school student with dreams of becoming a writer, I attend a summer writing program that was taught by an assortment of local writers and poets, none of them particularly famous but all with their own distinctive Southern voices. One of them was Ron Rash, a quiet and generous poet who read us a section from an upcoming novel, which opens when a 12-year-old girl drowns in a river. The prose was elegant and haunting-- I still remember it well-- and it was clear he had that knack for Southern gothic that's somehow embedded genetically down there.

Now maybe the rest of the world will get a better look at what Ron Rash has to offer. No less than Darren Aronofsky and Angelina Jolie are eyeing his new book Serena: A Novel, a period piece about a woman who slowly goes all Lady Macbeth as she and her husband build a timber empire in 1929 North Carolina. THR writes that Jolie would star in the film with Aronofsky directing, though script work would be needed before things can go forward, and you know how long those things can take.

I haven't read Serena but I have immense faith in Rash's storytelling skills, not to mention Aronofsky's ability to tell stories about difficult characters making sometimes incomprehensible choices. The one potential sticking point here? Jolie's Southern accent. Hollywood actresses can be frequently terrible at capturing the cadences-- even Julia Roberts, raised in Georgia, had an awful one in Steel Magnolias-- and a bad Southern accent is like nails on a chalkboard for me. It's petty, yes, especially to worry about so far in advance. But it seems like the only potential downside right now in a project that otherwise sounds amazing.