… Dramatizing her primary theme of Kentucky hill people struggling to maintain their integrity amid family and community pressures, Hunter's Horn equals The Dollmaker in its distinctive characters and its forceful scenes. Hunter's Horn is unusual for juxtaposing raucous, pungent humor with uncompromising depictions of the prejudices and cruelties that constrict lives.

The hero, Nunn Ballew, husband, father of five, and owner of a dilapidated farm, neglects his family responsibilities to hunt the elusive red fox, King Devil. His maniacal pursuit recalls Ahab's search for Moby Dick, but Arnow's novel discloses the family consequences of the obsession as well as the thrill and challenge of an encounter with an enigmatic natural force. A loving though undemonstrative man, Nunn suffers shame and guilt when, for example, he spends all the family's money on two pedigreed foxhounds he hopes will catch King Devil….

But however much we may resent Nunn's improvidence …, it is a testament to Arnow's extraordinary skill at characterization that almost against our will we share his anguish and cheer him on after his four-legged red whale. Hunter's Horn manifests Arnow's ability to create male characters as palpable and as complex as her best women. Nunn can't be written off as another hateful man.

Hunter's Horn will help to defuse the charge that women writers produce only what are denigratingly called "women's books." Arnow's territory is Faulkner's—"the human heart in conflict with itself"—a region broader than sexual politics or the Appalachian hills. She has the Jamesian ability to enter the consciousness of all her characters, Nunn's no less than Gertie's in The Dollmaker.

In Arnow's thickly populated world, many characters are enchantingly or painfully tangible: Suse's impassioned attempt to escape the hill woman's (then) biological determination scorches the novel's last hundred pages…. The novel's childbirth scenes are unrivaled in American fiction. They dramatize unflinchingly the pain and wonder of drugless deliveries….

The heart of the novel is its authentic record of an original, earthy brand of speaking whose appeal goes beyond dialect. The characters' love of talk, demonstrated in their outlandish exaggerations of local occurrences, reflects their exuberance, their wit, and their sympathy with the natural world. With Arnow's talent, King Devil becomes as compelling an adversary as Moby Dick, and Little Smokey Creek as vast a territory as the Pacific Ocean. (p. 134)