My First Time: Michael A. Ferro

No Country for Recluse Writers: How My First Novel Brought Me Out of the Dark

Perhaps it’s the introverted, quiet side of me, or maybe it’s the cynical, brooding half that embraces absurdity and satire in all its forms, but when I long ago thought about being a writer, I’d imagined that I could do it like many of the reclusive literary heroes of my past: Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Harper Lee, and many such others. I wanted more than anything to keep out of the spotlight—to write novels, perhaps under a pseudonym, have them published, and then slip silently back into the shadows while my agent and editors sent correspondence by way of the Pony Express, inquiring as to when my next manuscript would be ready. When I had finally finished writing my debut novel, Title 13, I emerged from many months of seclusion in my kitchen writing area and began looking for a publisher. One thing quickly became apparent: this was 2016 and publishing doesn’t work like that anymore.

To show how clueless I was, how out-of-touch I’d become, this actually came as a surprise to me. After a pretty rough go of things for a few years following college, I largely withdrew from social life. Sure, I worked at my day job, did my grocery shopping on the weekends and whatnot, but for the most part, I was a man who lived in rural Ann Arbor holed up in his house with his dog and books. Still, it felt like a necessary isolation.

Meanwhile, in the last few months of a long-term relationship, my then-girlfriend and I visited Chicago. I hadn’t been back to the Windy City since I’d lived there during the strangest, darkest twelve months of my life—a time when I was wildly out of sorts and working for the federal government within a massive urban landscape that I found both intoxicating and absurd in many ways. When we returned to Michigan, I knew what the subject of my first novel needed to be: The Second City. On one of my last turbulent days in Chicago years before, I’d written one page of the beginning of a story. I didn’t know where that story was leading, what it meant when I wrote it, or even why I had written it—it just happened. Now, years later, I took out that one page and sat down to start fresh. I was ready to write a book.

After a few months, the relationship with my girlfriend ended when I couldn’t break my focus from the work-in-progress. Each weeknight after work turned into a marathon of reading, planning, and bits of composition. My weekends, on the other hand, were spent from morning to well past midnight writing as much as I could. It went on like this for many months and before I knew it, I had largely cut myself off from friends, people in my community, and even my family to some extent.

Oddly enough, I enjoyed it.

I grew especially fond of knowing that my only responsibilities were going to my job to pay my bills and working on my novel. No more social media, no more dating, no more talking to anyone, jabbering on and on about nonsense that had nothing to do with my interests; I was selfish and this cloistered haven of solitude was all mine. I wouldn’t realize until years later just how dangerous and insular that mindset can become if you’re not too careful.

Once I’d finished the first draft of my novel about a year later, I emerged from my writer’s cocoon, brushed the pizza crust crumbs off my bathrobe, and combed the fruit flies from my belly-length beard. I transcribed my much-too-long typewritten 135,000-word manuscript onto my laptop, editing it in the process, and put my Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter away. The typewriter had left an imprint on my kitchen table that I still notice to this day.

Next came the hard part: finding a publisher. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I had no idea then just how many writers were out there trying to do the same thing I was. Like I mentioned, I was pretty much living in a spooky, malodorous cave. After a few months, I came across a small press that looked intriguing. I sent them a sample of my manuscript and to my surprise, they asked to read more. After another month or so, they informed me they had decided to publish my novel and sent me a contract.

After I’d soiled myself, ran around my yard screaming at the trees in joy, and imagined paying off all my credit card debt with royalty checks, I had a lawyer look over the contract. While the basic terms were all fair and good, there was one clause that immediately struck me as unusual. As one of this press’ authors, I would be required to take part in a “social media training” program, as well as participate in a great many number of live interviews, Q&As, and interactive reader events.

My heart sank.

Surely this could be negotiable, I thought. I knew a lot of young writers were “building their brands” in the wake of the successes enjoyed by “branded” writers like J. K. Rowling, E. L. James, and Stephenie Meyer, but I wanted no part of it. My literary heroes had always let their work speak for itself. The publisher assured me that this was non-negotiable, that they wanted their writers to make a connection with their readers, promote themselves heavily on social media, and increase their visibility. To the press’ credit, this can indeed be a very effective way for small publishers to find new readers and spark success, but at the same time, it just didn’t feel right for my novel. Title 13 is a darkly comic satire about the absurdity of modern politics and government, while also being a highly emotional tale of literary fiction that focuses on the devastating effects of addiction and a divisive American culture. This just didn’t feel like the kind of story I wanted to saturate peoples’ social media feeds with—not to mention I’d also just spent years in hibernation and the idea of jumping right into the thick of a “social media training” program felt akin to dropping a baby-faced army recruit fresh out of boot camp into the bloody jungles of Cambodia.

I knew I wasn’t ready for this. Something felt off.

After some additional back and forth, the publisher and I amicably parted ways. While I was devastated that this meant my novel would probably never see the light of day, I couldn’t help but to also feel a twinge of relief. I could go back to my hole, safe and secluded.

That’s when everything changed.

In an effort to see if my long-held dreams of being a recluse writer were effectively dead in the twenty-first century, I began to reach out to all sorts of publishers and writers. Before long, I came across a person who would change my whole perspective on the publishing world: Laura Stanfill. Laura runs the incredible Forest Avenue Press in Portland, Oregon, about as far from Ann Arbor as anywhere else in the continental United States. And yet, after emailing back and forth with Laura just a few times, I began to realize how crucial (and, more importantly, rewarding) it can be to make friends with others in the writing industry.

Laura then put me in contact with another publisher in Ann Arbor named Jon Wilson who runs Fish Out of Water Books and the two of us became friends. I couldn’t believe it: someone who lived on the other side of the country had just put me in contact with a person whom I had probably run into once or twice at a shop downtown. And better yet, I actually liked this guy! How had we not already been introduced to one another in this relatively small town? Then I remembered my smelly cave. It was already growing smaller and smaller in my mind. From that moment on, I vowed to get to know all these amazing literary citizens.

In a moment of serendipity, I soon heard back from a different publisher I’d contacted many months earlier: Harvard Square Editions. They were intrigued by my novel. They had a few questions, and after some back and forth, I was given a contract. This time, there was no clause about having to participate and engage with readers, but I was of a different mindset now—I knew that connecting with other readers and writers wouldn’t damage my soul, rob me of my creativity, crush my privacy, or anything shortsighted like that. Rather, it could be quite the opposite: I might make meaningful connections with others who shared the same interests, created their own works that I would now know about, and together we could help one another succeed. It was a win-win.

After my lawyer reviewed the contract, I signed with Harvard Square Editions and off we went. From the start of that terrifying and exciting process of publishing my first novel, I knew I had a legion of new friends and colleagues who were at my side. And in true form, folks like Laura and Jon assisted me with absolute gusto, never once seeking transaction, and even put me in contact with others who helped me along the way to boot. I made an oath then and there that should ever a young writer come my way seeking aid or advice, I would bend over backwards to lend them a hand. It’s a pay it forward business, folks.

I’d signed my contract with Harvard Square Editions in February 2017 and my book was published one year later. Between that time, I worked with a crackerjack team of editors, designers, and, now, friends. We all supported one another, wanted one another to succeed, and looked to make sure that the world of books and literature had a place in our everyday society, despite the devastating presidential election and its effects on America’s arts and culture. There would be times that I would be overwhelmed by the responsibilities of preparing a novel for publication, even losing much of the eyesight in my left eye due to stress, but in the end, it was all worth it. Publishing your debut novel can be terrifying enough, let alone trying to do it all alone. Making friends in the publishing business has made all the difference in the world. And now, Title 13, the thing I suffered, sweat, bled, and lost some of my eyesight over, is finally out there in the world. It’s a reality.

All that being said, you might ask: Do I ever still wish that I were a recluse novelist like my hero authors of old? Do I still envy the likes of Cormac McCarthy, sitting out there in the New Mexico desert somewhere, typing up his latest masterpiece on a dusty, aging typewriter in his self-made “no country for old men”? The answer is sure—who wouldn’t want that at times? But when that happens, all I need to do is close my laptop, shut the curtains, and lay down in the dark for a bit with my dog.

I’m convinced that we are all split personalities—the dark and the light. I centered Title 13 around this concept. At different points in our lives, depending on our circumstances, one side gets the better of the other. Will I remain this socially-connected forever? Probably not. Is there a chance that I, like anyone else, might slip back into isolation? Of course. It’s only realistic to realize that we are complicated beings always being pulled by the cosmic whims of an absurd universe. Still, while I’m here, let’s stay connected and get to work, friends.


Michael A. Ferro’s debut novel, Title 13, was published by Harvard Square Editions in February. He has received an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train Stories for their New Writers Award, won the Jim Cash Creative Writing Award for Fiction, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Michael’s writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Born and bred in Detroit, he has lived, worked, and written throughout the Midwest. He currently resides in rural Ann Arbor, Michigan. Click here to visit his website.


My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.

A Lot of Fighting and F*cking: The North Water by Ian McGuire

The North Water
by Ian McGuire
Review by Bryan Kemler

Last week, a routine phone conversation with my mother took a turn down a worn and familiar path.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

It is usually one of my favorite topics to talk about, but this time my heart sank.

“The North Water,” I admitted, feeling an odd sense of shame. I was afraid she may have even heard of it.

“I’ve heard of that one,” she said. “How is it?”

I suspected that she had me on speakerphone. Still, I could not help but give her my honest summary.

“Well, Mom,” I said, “There is a lot of fighting....and a lot of fucking.”

Immediately, my father blurted out that their first guests for Tuesday night church group had arrived. “Safe travels,” he said to me, as if the devil were only a step behind, and the line went dead. Later that night, I finished the book.

I am here to report that I loved Ian McGuire’s novel. And I fully endorse it, and recommend it. Unless you are my mother, my wife, my daughter, or anyone who is kind-hearted or empathetic or decent. I suspect that the more time you spend in church, the less you will like this book. Also, if you require trigger warnings, avoid this book.

But, assuming you are an adult of reasonably-sound mind and not overly freaked-out by horrible, violent imagery, then I whole-heartedly recommend this book to you.

The North Water is a whaling story set in the 19th century. That fact will be quickly lost on you because Mr. McGuire’s writing is so immediate and urgent that it betrays time. As you may have guessed from the title, this is a sea tale, describing the voyage of The Volunteer. Picture Moby-Dick, except imagine there aren’t so many whales anymore at the time this novel takes place. The Volunteer’s whaling venture has little, if any, chance of success. Imagine the U.S. rust belt, or coal country of Appalachia. Our story unfolds in the company of poor, desperate men with obsolete skills, under the stress of failing conditions. These are the men left in the wake of changing times.

The protagonist is Patrick Sumner, a surgeon, and a man seemingly graced with many of Sherlock Holmes’ worst qualities, but few of his best. Sumner learns a cabin boy on the vessel has been raped. He begins an investigation, and the boy promptly turns up dead. But this is no Agatha Christie novel; we know exactly who did it.

The villain, Henry Drax, did it. Hats off to you, Mr. McGuire, for creating the most frightening, disgusting, deplorable and mindless villain...maybe ever. Mr. Drax is the kind of villain whose name you will remember a month later. I’m not spoiling anything; his nature is made clear from the beginning. We the readers know exactly who raped and killed the cabin boy.

But our hero, Dr. Sumner, does not. He knows only that it was one of the crew. Sumner enlists the help of Captain Brownlee, who has his own agenda—one which does not include the safe return of his vessel to its home port. The captain’s malfeasance is also quickly revealed in the story.

One thing I loved about this book is that McGuire never gives you the question you want: Who killed the cabin boy? Or, what will happen to the whaling industry? Or, what will happen to the captain? Or, what will happen to the shipmates? These are the questions you want. But the only question McGuire allows is this: Will a single character survive this ill-fated mission?

There is a segment of the story that is set on the Arctic ice where Mr. McGuire brilliantly evokes the disorienting quality of the experience, as well as the people who call that place home. This part reminds me of the writing of Paul Bowles. In fact, if you like Bowles you will probably like this book.

Another book that came to mind, mainly because of the frequent use of pronouns and violence, was Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. For fun, I took a look at Blood Meridian after I finished this book to see how the level of violence compared—and it doesn’t. The North Water is like Blood Meridian on steroids. But if you liked Blood Meridian, you will probably like this book.

I once watched a large dog bullying a pack of feral Chihuahuas on a strand of beach in Mexico. I noticed that the Chihuahuas were trying to encircle the larger animal, and turned back to my beer. A moment later, the big dog howled bloody murder and I turned to see the beast spinning around and around in a frantic circle, in terror and pain. One of the Chihuahuas had him by the testicles, and was spinning around attached to the dog’s backside. Finally, the little dog let go, and the big dog ran off down the beach yelping. This novel kind of made me feel like the big dog. Except in a good way.

I will let the villain, Henry Drax, have the last words: “Oh, the others will talk and plan and make oaths and promises, but there are precious few fuckers who will do.” In The North Water, Mr. McGuire has shown himself to be one of those precious few fuckers who do.


Bryan Kemler is an ex-lawyer and a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed captain, but mostly a writer trying to do the hard work it takes to become an author. He is currently working on a novel called American Savage whose protagonist is a young George Washington.

Friday Freebie: Vanity Fair’s Writers on Writers

Congratulations to Nebojsa Zlatanovic, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie: Father Figure by Lamar Herrin.

This week’s contest is for the new essay collection Vanity Fair’s Writers on Writers, edited by Graydon Carter. A partial list of writers (both contributors and subjects) includes: Eudora Welty, Jack Kerouac, Elizabeth Bishop, Reynolds Price, Anne Tyler, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, Paul Bowles, Willa Cather, Jay McInerney, Jacqueline Woodson, Toni Morrison, Dave Eggers, Judy Blume, Cormac McCarthy, Stieg Larsson, Donna Tartt and William Styron. That’s only a partial list; many other authors populate these pages. Keep reading for more information about the book...

What did Christopher Hitchens think of Dorothy Parker? How did meeting e.e. cummings change the young Susan Cheever? What does Martin Amis have to say about how Saul Bellow’s love life influenced his writing? Vanity Fair has published many of the most interesting writers and thinkers of our time. Collected here for the first time are forty-one essays exploring how writers influence one another and our culture, from James Baldwin to Joan Didion to James Patterson.

If you’d like a chance at winning Vanity Fair’s Writers on Writers, simply email your name and mailing address to

thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please. This contest is limited to those with an address in the U.S. Despite its name, the Friday Freebie remains open to entries until midnight on Nov. 10, at which time I’ll draw the winning name. I’ll announce the lucky reader on Nov. 11. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.

Elizabeth Marro’s Library: Every Book Has a Story

Reader:  Elizabeth Marro
Location:  San Diego, CA
Collection Size:  Between 500 and 600.
The one book I'd run back into a burning building to rescue:  Sorry, I can’t pick just one. But now that you’ve got me worried, my picks will be grouped together on a shelf near the door along with a fireproof satchel big enough for all 21 novels in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, Volumes I through III of the Dictionary of American Regional English, AND a very beat-up 1936 edition of Gone with the Wind. While each is replaceable, they are from or linked directly to a person I love. The stories and those connections will comfort me when my home is in ashes.
Favorite book from childhood:  Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes. My copy is gone now, dropped too many times in the bathtub when I was growing up, but I read it so many times I can conjure scenes from memory. It was the first book that treated me like an adult.
Guilty pleasure book:  I never feel guilty about reading any book. I do feel an almost sinful pleasure when I escape into the calli of Venice with Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti. They are not so much mysteries as an excuse for Leon to describe the relentless assault on the “beautiful and civilized” life of Venetians. In the process we are treated to elaborate descriptions of food, wine, walks, and the fading beauty as well as the resilience of the city.

The central library in my home are the shelves that wrap around our bed and spill onto the additional shelves we’ve stashed along the walls of the room. There are branch libraries in my office, the bathroom, the guest room, the car and in a bag that holds books I want near me just in case. A growing number of books populate my Kindle and iBooks libraries.

I do have an issue right now with organization which is to say, I don’t have any. Jorge Luis Borges’s Collected Fictions are separated from Cortazar’s Cronopios and Famas by several novels by Cormac McCarthy who can also be found across my room on another shelf. Early Richard Ford shares space with the The Well Dog Book and later Richard Ford can be found squeezed between Jane Austen and Amy Tan and not far from a book called Super Brain. It wasn’t always thus but thanks to a massive “decluttering” campaign in advance of a move we never made, a huge number of our books were stashed under our bed for a long time. When I retrieved them I behaved like a woman in a fever, ripping open bags and stashing on the shelves as the came out of the bags. I was just happy to see them once again.

There is something to be said, though, for the random shelving of books. The hunt for Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel uncovers the long-lost edition of Carol Shields’ Collected Stories. I discovered Le Carre’s The Tailor of Panama, Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, Anne Tyler’s Noah’s Compass, and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior clustered together and I recalled how I’d grabbed each of them once to just to study their opening pages. Each offers a different version of the perfect way to start.

The books I have are linked to periods of my life, projects I’m working on, and the crushes that follow when I discover or rediscover writing I love. The ones that I hold closest to my heart are linked to the people who brought them into my life.

My father, who taught me to read at the age of four and then left big adult books around for me to tackle, turned me on to the Patrick O’Brian’s series about twenty years ago. I knew why he loved them—he went to sea when he was seventeen and has never gotten over it. I love the ocean but cannot conceive of a life on it—or even contemplate a ferry ride without reaching for motion-sickness patches. I went to sea, though, with Aubrey and Maturin many many times, and each time, my father was with me or waiting for me to emerge so we could chat about the latest adventures. I cannot look at the books on my shelf without hearing my father’s delighted laugh or remembering the time we took a family walk, so deep in discussion of how the final novel might have ended had O’Brian lived to complete it, that my sister stopped us and said, “Who the hell is Jack?”

My husband gave me the first three volumes of the Dictionary of American Regional English. Each birthday or Christmas holds the promise of another volume. I can open any page and find something to delight me. The “lopsy lows,” a term uncovered in New Jersey around 1968 for example are joking names for imaginary diseases while “lopsy-wise” is something folks in New Hampshire and Maine used to say around 1900 to describe something askew, or a lopsided manner. The other day, I opened up the third volume to a random page and found the term “jimberjawed.” I’m not sure how but I will find a way to use that word.

My husband knew that these books would delight me. He has mixed success when it comes to picking out other kinds of gifts but he never fails when it comes to books. Our early dates often wound up with us walking the aisles of a bookstore. He would find something and bring it to me and it would be perfect. We would sit for hours with stacks of books, deciding which ones to buy. When I once shared this with my aunt, she asked, “Would you rather have a man who knows your dress size or a man who knows your mind?” The answer was obvious. I don’t wear dresses much anyway.

Then there is my copy of Gone With The Wind owned first by Anne M. Wild of Rochester, New York whose family owned the old New Hampshire house our family moved into in 1966. The house was empty of people but bookcases all over the downstairs were filled with leather-bound volumes of Dickens and Shakespeare and a single copy of Gone With the Wind. When I was fourteen and driving my mother crazy with my moods, my boredom, and my insecurities, she grabbed it off the shelf and told me to read it. If nothing else, it would give her a few days of peace.

I began to read. And read. And read. I sat in the back of algebra class, the text book propped up on my desk, GWTW hidden below on my lap. I remember finishing it late one spring afternoon, almost suppertime. I wandered to the kitchen in a fog and sat down at the table while my mother stood at the stove making dinner. It was just the two of us, a rare moment on a busy school night in our large, chaotic household.

“You finished,” she said.

“Yes.” I could barely speak I was still so full of the story.

She came over a put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Just sit a minute.”

Although there is much I have come to question about GWTW, and my view of what the story is about has dramatically changed since I was fourteen, I’ve never forgotten the desolation I felt when I finished the final page. I’ve never forgotten that moment of silent, shared understanding with my mother. I’ve never forgotten that she let me sit there as long as I needed to even though it was my turn to set the table.

These small stories live on my shelves along with the books. Perhaps organizing them makes sense. Perhaps, in the end, it only matters that they are there.


Elizabeth Marro is the author of the debut novel, Casualties. Her work has appeared in The San Diego Reader, The Gloucester Daily Times, LiteraryMama.com, and elsewhere. A long-time resident of the “North Country” region of New Hampshire, she holds degrees from the University of New Hampshire and Rutgers University, and now lives in San Diego. Read more about her at her website.

My Library is an intimate look at personal book collections.  Readers are encouraged to send high-resolution photos of their home libraries or bookshelves, along with a description of particular shelving challenges, quirks in sorting (alphabetically? by color?), number of books in the collection, and particular titles which are in the To-Be-Read pile.  Email thequiveringpen@gmail.com for more information.

Friday Freebie: The Bully of Order by Brian Hart and The Big Crowd by Kevin Baker

Congratulations to Elaine Panneton, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: The Great Glass Sea by Josh Weil, Sea Creatures by Susanna Daniel, and The Story of Land and Sea by Katy Simpson Smith.

This week's book giveaway is a pair of novels sure to appeal to lovers of riveting historical fiction.  Up for grabs: The Bully of Order by Brian Hart and The Big Crowd by Kevin Baker.  The Bully of Order is a hardcover, The Big Crowd is a brand-new trade paperback.  Read on for more information about each of the books....

Set in Washington Territory in 1886, The Bully of Order is about Jacob and Nell Ellstrom who step from ship to shore and are struck dumb by the sight of their new home--the Harbor, a ragged township of mud streets and windowless shacks.  In the years to come this will be known as one of the busiest and most dangerous ports in the world, and with Jacob's station as the only town physician, prosperity and respect soon rain down on the Ellstroms.  Then their son, Duncan, is born, and these are grand days, busy and full of growth.  But when a new physician arrives, Jacob is revealed as an impostor, a fraud, and he flees, leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves.  Years later, on a fated Fourth of July picnic, Duncan Ellstrom falls in love.  Her name is Teresa Boyerton, and her father owns the largest sawmill in the Harbor.  Their relationship is forbidden by class and by circumstance, because without Jacob there to guide him, Duncan has gone to work for Hank Bellhouse, the local crime boss.  Now, if Duncan wants to be with Teresa, he must face not only his past, but the realities of a dark and violent world and his place within it.  Told from various points of view, Brian Hart's novel follows the evolution of the Harbor from a mudstamp outpost to a city that rivals the promise of San Francisco.  The Bully of Order is a meditation on progress, love, and identity; a spellbinding novel of fate and redemption--told with a muscular lyricism and filled with a cast of characters Shakespearean in scope--where everyone is as much at the mercy of the weather as they are of the times.  “An epic novel of violence, depravity, and mayhem…Brian Hart writes like Cormac McCarthy in overdrive.  What talent, what nerve, what a wondrous and spellbinding book.  The Bully of Order is part creation myth, part apocalyptic thriller, and it’s peopled with charlatans, swindlers, and murderers who will haunt your dreams.”  (John Dufresne, author of No Regrets, Coyote)

In The Big Crowd, Kevin Baker (Paradise Alley) gives us a portrait of New York City politics and organized crime in the 1940s.  Tom O'Kane has always looked up to his brother, Charlie, latching onto him as a surrogate father as soon as he arrived in America from County Mayo.  Charlie is the American Dream personified: an immigrant who worked his way up from beat cop to mayor of New York.  But what if Charlie isn't as wonderful as he seems?  Based on one of the biggest unsolved mob murders in history, the heart of The Big Crowd is a mystery.  More than a decade after Tom arrives in New York, he is forced to confront the truth about Charlie while investigating the mysterious "suicide" of "Kid Twist," Charlie's star witness against the largest crime syndicate in New York.  As Tom digs deeper, the secrets he uncovers throw everything he thinks he knows about his beloved brother into question.  In The Big Crowd, Kevin Baker brings the 1940s to indelible life, from the beaches of Acapulco to the battlefields of World War II, from Gracie Mansion to the Brooklyn docks.  Booklist said, "Baker takes another juicy bite out of the Big Apple, demonstrating once again that nobody does old New York—in all its glamour and its grit—better."

If you’d like a chance at winning both books, simply email your name and mailing address to

thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on Sept. 4, at which time I’ll draw the winning name.  I’ll announce the lucky reader on Sept. 5.  If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.

Waiting for the Apocalypse: Outtakes from my interview with Malcolm Brooks (Painted Horses)

My interview with Malcolm Brooks is up over at The Barnes & Noble Review and I encourage you to go over there and read what he has to say about writing, busting the myths of western literature, and being inspired by the U.S. Army's last horse cavalry unit.

Click here to read the interview

Here's part of what I wrote by way of introduction to Malcolm and Painted Horses:

      It comes as little surprise to learn that Lonesome Dove is a seminal literary influence in Malcolm Brooks’s life. Reading his debut novel, Painted Horses, you’ll hear the voice of Larry McMurtry, as well as echoes of Jim Harrison, Wallace Stegner, and that old go-to, Cormac McCarthy. But make no mistake, Malcolm Brooks stands on his own without leaning on the crutches of those other seasoned writers. Painted Horses — which is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a No. 1 Indie Next Pick for August — is unlike any “western” I’ve read; it refreshes the genre while nodding back at its roots.
      Set in Montana in the mid-1950s, the novel presents us with an American West on the cusp of change. Catherine Lemay is a young archaeologist hired to survey a canyon in advance of a major dam project; her job is to make sure nothing of historic value will be lost in the coming flood. The task proves to be more complicated than she thought — especially after she meets John H, a mustanger and a veteran of the U.S. Army’s last mounted cavalry campaign, who’s been living a fugitive life in the canyon. Together, the two race against time to save the past before it is destroyed by an industry with an eye on the future.

As with any published interview, there were some good snippets of conversation which didn't make the final cut.  Today, I thought I'd randomly pick a few of those scraps up off the cutting-room floor and share them with you here at The Quivering Pen:

From the very first scene of Painted Horses, you introduce some complex ideas about progress versus the dying ways of the past--you have Catherine riding a train into Montana and looking out the window at an "utterly alien species" racing alongside.  You write: "[She had] anticipated the general vista of a cowboy movie.  Red mesas and towering sandstone spires.  Minuscule horsemen galloping."  Where do you place Catherine, the archaeologist, along this historical timeline?

Life is paradox, and I believe we’re all creatures of supreme duality.  Catherine struggles constantly with the expectations and sort of soulless strictures of a hard science, and conforming to those as a function of professionalism, while in her heart remaining utterly seduced by the mystery and magic and beauty of buried remnants.  Part of her wants to be Mr. Spock, but at heart she’s a Romantic poet.

Malcolm Brooks on book tour at Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, Montana
(and, yes, there was more than just one person in the audience that night)

For me, some of the most startling and, frankly, distressing scenes were the ones involving blatant male chauvinism.  As a man, were these scenes hard for you to write?

They weren’t hard for me to write at all.  I come out of an extremely conservative evangelical subculture, and have worked in the building trades for more than two decades.  I’ve heard it all, and it’s basic mimicry.  I’ve also had the great pleasure of knowing and associating with more than a few passionate, driven, accomplished women, none of whom let something as toothless as male bluster or condescension stop them.

What brought you to Montana?

A couple of things, really.  I had this mythical sense of the state from the time I was a little kid.  I was a huge fan of westerns and horses and all of that.  It’s part of my core identity.  Montana was this mythical place for me and it was solidified when I read Lonesome Dove.  And then I read A River Runs Through It and Legends of the Fall before I ever moved here.  I knew the University of Montana had a great MFA program and that Missoula was a writer-centric place.  When I went to finish my English degree, I thought, That’s where I want to go.  I like to fly-fish, too.  So this is where I wound up when I was 24.  I’d worked for my dad for six years out of high school.  Then I moved around to Phoenix, northeastern Oregon, and in the early 90s I was up in Kalispell (Montana), working on a house-building crew for six months.  I’d lived in various places, but always wound up going back home to California again and just putting on the tool belt and working some more for my dad.  My father was a carpenter most of his life—he joined his first union when he was nineteen.  He was the kind of guy where if he needed more people on a concrete pour when I was in high school, I wouldn’t go to school that day.  It taught me there’s more than one way to get an education.

Malcolm Brooks on the job in Missoula, Montana

You mentioned your family was pretty strict in the religious sense.

My parents went from being long-hair, pseudo-counter-culture people to where my dad’s hair was cut into a high-and-tight and he was a 28-year-old deacon.  My father had been raised in the New Jersey foster care system and the primary foster parent he had at a formative time was a preacher.  So he always had a real sense for Christianity, that was his default setting.  Once they had kids, my parents just went way into religion.  It wasn’t mainline Christianity; it was a Baptist sect that was kind of cult-y, out of a Southern Baptist tradition—the crazy ones that were off burning Beatles records because of some off-hand comment John Lennon made.  That Beatles thing happened about six years before my parents went all total-immersion into it.  They got with this pretty intense Baptist church.  The nadir—or apogee, depending on how you want to look at it—came when someone predicted the Second Coming of Christ, based on mathematics and Biblical prophecy.  The church we were going to had totally fallen for this.  It was going to be X Day at X Time in 1980.  On that day, we stood around in the back yard at the appointed time and held hands in a circle and waited for the Second Coming.

Were you snickering or rolling your eyes at the whole thing?

At the time, no—I totally bought into it.  I was nine years old and I’d been completed immersed in this whole subculture from the time I was three years old.  I didn’t know any different.  To me, that was reality.  We were totally sheltered.  Part of the reason why I’m such a sponge for pop culture today is because my brothers and I were totally kept from it.  We lived in this little sensory-deprivation chamber.

Before the big conversion moment with my parents—back when they were still living a somewhat normal life—my dad had a massive record collection—he was a huge Beatles fan, along with The Doors and Blood, Sweat and Tears.  When I was really little, my mom said she would put me on a hobby horse—you know, the kind with the springs on it—in front of my dad’s huge stereo system, which included a reel-to-reel tape player, and she’d put on a Doors album.  While she was doing her thing cleaning the house, I’d be in front of this huge speaker on a hobby horse.

You were on horses even way back then.

Yeah, exactly.  I think all that music got fixed in my psyche somehow.  Later, when my parents joined the church, they did a cleansing and all those records went away—but my father kept them, he had them boxed up in the basement.  I think he really missed the music…because when Bob Dylan converted to Christianity, the first thing my dad did was rush out and buy Slow Train Coming and I can remember sitting in a rocking chair listening to that album, which was real rock-n-roll which also had a message behind it.

Can you pinpoint when you broke free of all that religious conservatism?

I think the moment that the Second Coming didn’t happen was the first chink in the armor.  I wasn’t quite sure how to process it.  A year after that, when I was 10, my parents packed up and moved across the country from New Jersey to Southern California and in retrospect, I think that was a wake-up call for them, too—that maybe they were immersed in something to a degree that they didn’t need to be. We found a church in California, but it was much less cloistered and much less of a total-control type of church.

I was always writing back then—westerns or English-style mysteries.  I had an escapist streak as a kid.  I remember reading The Winds of War in the eighth grade because the mini-series was on TV—oh, that's another story.  My parents didn’t have a TV for years.  Right around the time when I was 11 or 12, I think my dad wanted to watch the World Series, so my parents knuckled down and bought a TV set.  The only way you could get reception was if you had cable.  So we went from nothing to everything.  Both my parents were working at that time, so my whole equation shifted.  I was in the perfect place at the perfect time because I was a total sponge for things like Hitchcock films and Marilyn Monroe and all kinds of stuff.  I just absorbed it and fast.  My parents and I sat and watched The Winds of War together.  I think they must have probably been missing some stimulation themselves, and they probably rationalized letting us watch TV it by saying it was historical and it had to do with wars and stuff.  So then I got the book and I read it.  But I was also reading Louis L’Amour westerns and Agatha Christie mysteries.

I was in Christian schools all the way up until I was in eighth grade.  So eighth grade was the first time I was in a public school….and that’s when my English teacher gave me Lonesome Dove.  She gave it to me at the end of June as an eighth-grade graduation gift.  She called my house and told my mom, “Look, I know this is an adult novel, and it’s not written for children but your son is not a child as a reader and I think this book will change his life.”   And she was right.

Friday Freebie: Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks

Congratulations to Elizabeth Bevins, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: the Edward Falco prize package, which included the novels Toughs, Saint John of the Five Boroughs and Wolf Point, and the short story collection Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha.

This week's book giveaway is Painted Horses, the debut novel by my fellow Montanan (and fellow Grove/Atlantic author) Malcolm Brooks.  Those of you who are regular patrons of my social media feeds are probably sick of hearing me wax enthusiastic about this novel, so now I'm giving you a chance to find out what my fuss is all about.  One lucky reader will win a signed copy of Painted Horses.  Here's the jacket copy for the novel:

In the mid-1950s, America was flush with prosperity and saw an unbroken line of progress clear to the horizon, while the West was still very much wild.  In this ambitious, incandescent debut, Malcolm Brooks animates that time and untamed landscape, in a tale of the modern and the ancient, of love and fate, and of heritage threatened by progress.  Catherine Lemay is a young archaeologist on her way to Montana, with a huge task before her—a canyon “as deep as the devil’s own appetites.”  Working ahead of a major dam project, she has one summer to prove nothing of historical value will be lost in the flood.  From the moment she arrives, nothing is familiar—the vastness of the canyon itself mocks the contained, artifact-rich digs in post-Blitz London where she cut her teeth.  And then there’s John H, a former mustanger and veteran of the U.S. Army’s last mounted cavalry campaign, living a fugitive life in the canyon.  John H inspires Catherine to see beauty in the stark landscape, and her heart opens to more than just the vanished past.  Painted Horses sends a dauntless young woman on a heroic quest, sings a love song to the horseman’s vanishing way of life, and reminds us that love and ambition, tradition and the future, often make strange bedfellows.

Here are a few words of praise for the novel:

      “Reminiscent of the fiery, lyrical and animated spirit of Cormac McCarthy’s Borderlands trilogy, and the wisdom and elegance of Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose, Painted Horses is its own work, a big, old-fashioned and important novel.”
            —Rick Bass, author of All the Land to Hold Us

      “From its filmic geographical canvases and epochs to its mesmerizing close-ups of men, women and horses whose weaknesses, wounds, and powers are in plain paradoxical view, Malcolm Brooks’ novel-making is always skilled and often breath-taking. There isn’t a passing landscape, archaeological wonder, minor character, dialect, or wild horse in this story that isn’t convincing. And the broken but magic horseman, John H, is for my money one of the great characters of Montana’s estimable literature.”
            —David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and The River Why

      “Malcolm Brooks’ novel has the hard thrill of the West, when it was still a new world, the tenderness of first love and the pain of knowledge. This book is a gripping, compulsively readable page-turner.”
            —Amy Bloom, author of Lucky Us

And of course there's this review by Natalie Storey here at The Quivering Pen.

If you’d like a chance at winning a signed copy of Painted Horses, simply email your name and mailing address to

thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on Aug. 14, at which time I’ll draw the winning name.  I’ll announce the lucky reader on Aug. 15.  If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.

Front Porch Books: August 2013 Edition

Front Porch Books is a monthly tally of books--mainly advance review copies (aka "uncorrected proofs" and "galleys")--I've received from publishers, but also sprinkled with packages from Book Mooch, Amazon and other sources.  Because my dear friends, Mr. FedEx and Mrs. UPS, leave them with a doorbell-and-dash method of delivery, I call them my Front Porch Books.  In this digital age, ARCs are also beamed to the doorstep of my Kindle via NetGalley and Edelweiss.  Note: most of these books won't be released for another 2-6 months; I'm just here to pique your interest and stock your wish lists. Cover art and opening lines may change before the book is finally released.

Goat Mountain by David Vann (HarperCollins):  When I think of David Vann, I think of Alaska since that's where two of his previous books, Caribou Island and Legend of a Suicide, have been set.  But Goat Mountain takes us to Northern California--a different physical landscape, but no less wrenching an emotional territory than what we've encountered in Vann's earlier fiction.  Even the Jacket Copy makes me catch my breath and bite my lip:

In the fall of 1978, on a 640-acre family ranch on Goat Mountain in Northern California, an eleven-year-old boy joins his grandfather, his father, and his father's best friend on the family's annual deer hunt.  Every fall they return to this dry, yellowed landscape dotted with oak, buckbrush, and the occasional stand of pine trees.  Goat Mountain is what this family owns and where they belong.  It is where their history is kept, where their memories and stories are shared.  And for the first time, the boy's story will become part of their narrative, if he can find a buck.  Itching to shoot, he is ready.  When the men arrive at the gate to their land, the father discovers a poacher and sights him through the scope of his gun.  He offers his son a look--a simple act that will explode in tragedy, transforming these men and this family, forcing them to question themselves and everything they thought they knew.  David Vann creates a haunting and provocative novel, in prose devastating and beautiful in its precision, that explores our most primal urges and beliefs, the bonds of blood and religion that define and secure us, and the consequences of our actions--what we owe for what we've done.

Here are the Opening Lines: "Dust like powder blanketing the air, making a reddish apparition of the day.  Smell of that dust and smell of pine, smell of doveweed.  The pickup a segmented creature, head twisting opposite the body.  A sharp bend and I nearly tumbled off the side."

Somebody Up There Hates You by Hollis Seamon (Algonquin Books):  One of my favorite publishing houses, Algonquin Books, is branching out into tween territory (just as one of my favorite literary magazines, One Story, has started a separate line of young-adult fiction).  If Seamon's novel about a teen in hospice care is any indication, the Algonquin Young Readers imprint has a long life ahead of it.  Here's the Jacket Copy:

"Chemo, radiation, a zillion surgeries, watching my mom age twenty years in twenty months...if that's part of the Big Dude's plan, then it's pretty obvious, isn't it?  Enough said."  Smart-mouthed and funny, sometimes raunchy, Richard Casey is in most ways a typical seventeen-year-old boy.  Except Richie has cancer, and he's spending his final days in a hospice unit.  His mother, his doctors, and the hospice staff are determined to keep Richie alive as long as possible.  But in this place where people go to die, Richie has plans to make the most of the life he has left.  Sylvie, the only other hospice inmate under sixty, then tells Richie she has a few plans of her own.  What begins as camaraderie quickly blossoms into real love, and this star-crossed pair is determined to live on their own terms, in whatever time they have left.  Making her young adult fiction debut, Hollis Seamon creates one of the most original voices to appear in young adult literature, narrating a story that is unflinching, graphic, heartbreaking, funny, and above all life-affirming in its depiction of what it really means to be a teenager dying of cancer.

Sure, it's a little The Fault in Our Stars-y, but crack open the front cover, turn to the first page, read the Opening Lines, and if you're like me, you'll be instantly hooked by Richie's smart (and smart-ass) voice:

      I shit you not.  Hey, I'm totally reliable, sweartogod.  I, Richard Casey--aka the Incredible Dying Boy--actually do live, temporarily, in the very hospice unit I'm going to tell you about.  Third floor, Hilltop Hospital, in the city of Hudson, the great state of New York.
      Let me tell you just one thing about this particular hospice.  Picture this: right in front of the elevator that spits people into our little hospice home there is a harpist.  No joke.  Right there in our lobby, every damn day, this old lady with white hair and weird long skirts sits by a honking huge harp and strums her heart out.  Or plucks, whatever.  The harp makes all these sappy sweet notes that stick in your throat.

The Deep Whatsis by Peter Mattei (Other Press):  If you were to take a quick glance at the cover of Peter Mattei's new book, you might be forgiven for thinking it's called "A Novel" because those are the largest, boldest words you'll see there.  But the title The Deep Whatsis is no less in-your-face with its puzzled meaning.  Maybe you'll later get confused and call it the Whatnot or the Whositz, but chances are, once you start reading it, you won't forget it--not after these memorable Opening Lines:

The intern from the edit house is so drunk she is trying to take her skin off.  At least that’s what it looks like.  She is already half-naked and is grabbing at her flesh trying to find the edge of the Threadless T-shirt that she lost half an hour ago.  I don’t remember her name.

As the Jacket Copy says, meet Eric Nye: player, philosopher, drunk, sociopath....and forgetter-of-intern's-names:

A ruthless young Chief Idea Officer at a New York City ad agency, Eric downsizes his department, guzzles only the finest Sancerre, pops pills, and chases women.  Then one day he meets Intern, whose name he can’t remember.  Will she be the cause of his downfall, or his unlikely awakening?  A gripping and hilarious satire of the inherent absurdity of advertising and the flippant cruelty of corporate behavior, The Deep Whatsis shows the devastating effects of a world where civility and respect have been fired.

Blurbworthiness: "With zingy, hilarious glee, Peter Mattei takes a sharp stick and pokes it at many deserving underbellies: the puffery of corporate America; hipsters, yoga dudes, and the general pretentiousness of north Brooklyn; and many more.  The Deep Whatsis is a provocative, darkly subversive, deeply satisfying novel."  (Kate Christensen, author of The Astral)

The Love-Charm of Bombs by Lara Feigel (Bloomsbury Press):  Sticking with the subject of great titles, Laura Feigel certainly caught my eye with her literary history of World War Two London.  The Love-Charm of Bombs takes its title from a Graham Greene quote: "The nightly routine of sirens, barrage, the probing raider, the unmistakable engine ('Where are you?  Where are you?  Where are you?'), the bomb-bursts moving nearer and then moving away, hold one like a love-charm."  Of all the books which have recently come across my desk, Feigel's probably holds my interest the most in the way it approaches a subject obliquely and from different angles, like something by William T. Vollman, Nicholson Baker, or David Foster Wallace.  Here's the Jacket Copy to explain:

When the first bombs fell on London in August 1940, the city was transformed overnight into a strange kind of battlefield.  For most Londoners, the sirens, guns, planes, and bombs brought sleepless nights, fear and loss.  But for a group of writers, the war became an incomparably vivid source of inspiration, the blazing streets scenes of exhilaration in which fear could transmute into love.  In this powerful chronicle of literary life under the Blitz, Lara Feigel vividly conjures the lives of five prominent writers: Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Rose Macaulay, Hilde Spiel and the novelist Henry Green.  Starting with a sparklingly detailed recreation of a single night of September 1940, the narrative traces the tempestuous experiences of these five figures through five years in London and Ireland, followed by postwar Vienna and Berlin.  Volunteering to drive ambulances, patrol the streets and fight fires, the protagonists all exhibited a unified spirit of a nation under siege, but as individuals their emotions were more volatile.  As the sky whistled and the ground shook, nerves were tested, loyalties examined and torrid affairs undertaken.  Literary historian and journalist Feigel brilliantly and beautifully interweaves the letters, diaries, journalism and fiction of her writers with official records to chart the history of a burning world, experienced through the eyes of extraordinary individuals.

Blurbworthiness: "Feigel writes with modesty and grace, never patronises or sentimentalises her subjects, and makes the reader glad to be sharing her ideas.  The Love-charm of Bombs is a bounding success as an account of wartime London and as a study of highly strung but tough characters under stress, and of the way that novelists transmute adultery into great art.  It evokes the inflamed skies, desolate streets, gashed buildings, broken windows, crushed or scorched corpses–and the ways that these stimulated novelists."  (The Sunday Telegraph)

An Afghanistan Picture Show by William T. Vollmann (Melville House):  Speaking of William T. Vollmann (see oblique reference above), here's the new edition of an old book of his.  God bless Melville House for bucking the advice of Library Journal (see direct reference below) and bringing this part-history, part-autobiography back to our attention after thirty years.  Like Nicholson Baker's (see above) Human Smoke, An Afghanistan Picture Show is a melange of war reportage, which is now dosed with three decades of hindsight.  In his self-deprecating introduction to this new edition from Melville House, Vollmann calls this book a "product of sincerity and gaucherie" which "suffers deficiencies of both form and content."  I don't know about you, but hearing an author warn us away from his writing in the very first paragraph only makes me want to read on further.  Here's the Jacket Copy to entice us deeper into the pages:

Never before available in paperback and all but invisible for twenty years, a personal account of the origins of America's longest war.  In 1982, the young William Vollmann worked odd jobs, including as a secretary at an insurance company, until he'd saved up enough money to go to Afghanistan, where he wanted to join the mujahedeen to fight the Soviets.  The resulting book wasn't published until 1992, and Library Journal rated it: "The wrong book written at the wrong time. . . . With the situation in Afghanistan rapidly heading toward resolution . . . libraries may safely skip this."  Thirty years later--and with the United States still mired in the longest war of its history--it's time for a reassessment of Vollmann's heartfelt tale of idealism and its terrifying betrayals.  An alloy of documentary and autobiographical elements characteristic of Vollmann's later nonfiction, An Afghanistan Picture Show is not a work of conventional reportage; instead, it's an account of a subtle and stubborn consciousness grappling with the limits of will and idealism imposed by violence and chaos.

No matter what Library Journal says, I won't be skipping this one.

The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane (Faber and Faber):  I have read the opening paragraph of Fiona McFarlane's debut novel three times now--at first, slowly; but then with increasing, heart-pounding speed each time--and I am convinced it's one of the most enticing openings to a novel I've read all year.  Take a look at the Opening Lines and judge for yourself:

Ruth woke at four in the morning and her blurry brain said, "Tiger."  That was natural; she was dreaming.  But there were noises in the house, and as she woke she heard them.  They came across the hallway from the lounge room.  Something large was rubbing against Ruth's couch and television and, as she suspected, the wheat-coloured recliner disguised as a wingback chair.  Other sounds followed: the panting and breathing of a large animal; a vibrancy of breath that suggested enormity and intent; definite mammalian noises, definitely feline, as if her cats had grown in size and were sniffing for food with enormous noses.  But the sleeping cats were weighing down the sheets at the end of Ruth's bed, and this was something else.

Dream or no dream, my mouth goes dry and I forget to breathe every time I read those vivid sentences.  The rest of the book looks just as compelling.  For your consideration, the Jacket Copy:

Ruth is widowed, her sons are grown, and she lives in an isolated beach house outside of town.  Her routines are few and small.  One day a stranger arrives at her door, looking as if she has been blown in from the sea.  This woman—Frida—claims to be a care worker sent by the government.  Ruth lets her in.  Now that Frida is in her house, is Ruth right to fear the tiger she hears on the prowl at night, far from its jungle habitat?  Why do memories of childhood in Fiji press upon her with increasing urgency?  How far can she trust this mysterious woman, Frida, who seems to carry with her own troubled past?  And how far can Ruth trust herself?  The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane’s hypnotic first novel, is no simple tale of a crime committed and a mystery solved.  This is a tale that soars above its own suspense to tell us, with exceptional grace and beauty, about aging, love, trust, dependence, and fear; about processes of colonization; and about things (and people) in places they shouldn’t be.  Here is a new writer who comes to us fully formed, working wonders with language, renewing our faith in the power of fiction to describe the mysterious workings of our minds.

Blurbworthiness: "The Night Guest is such an accomplished and polished debut.  There's a delicacy and poignancy to the writing, combined with almost unbearable suspense.  I love books in which I have no idea what's going to happen next."  (Kate Atkinson, author of Life After Life)

How to Be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman (St. Martin's Press):  Here's another book in the same vein as The Night Guest (the Unreliable Narrator Vein).  There's something just a little...off...in the Opening Lines of Emma Chapman's debut novel, starting with that second word, "somehow":

      Today, somehow, I am a smoker.
      I did not know this about myself.  As far as I remember, I have never smoked before.
      It feels unnatural, ill-fitting, for a woman of my age: a wife, a mother with a grown-up son, to sit in the middle of the day with a cigarette between her fingers.  Hector hates smoking.  He always coughs sharply when we walk behind someone smoking on the street, and I imagine his vocal cords rubbing together, moist and pink like chicken flesh.
      I rub the small white face of my watch.  Twelve fifteen.  By this time, I am usually working on something in the kitchen.  I must prepare supper for this evening, the recipe book propped open on the stand that Hector bought me for an early wedding anniversary.  I must make bread: mix the ingredients in a large bowl, knead it on the cold wooden worktop, watch it rise in the oven.  Hector likes to have fresh bread in the mornings.  Make your home a place of peace and order.
      The smoke tastes of earth, like the air underground.  It moves easily between my mouth and my makeshift ashtray: an antique sugar bowl once given to me by Hector’s mother.  The fear of being caught is like a familiar darkness; I breathe it in with the smoke.
      I found the cigarette packet in my handbag this morning underneath my purse.  It was disorientating, as if it wasn’t my bag after all.  There were some cigarettes missing.  I wonder if I smoked them.  I imagine myself, standing outside the shop in the village, lighting one.  It seems ridiculous.  I’m vaguely alarmed that I do not know for sure.  I know what Hector would say: that I have too much time on my hands, that I need to keep myself busy.  That I need to take my medication.  Empty nest syndrome, he tells his friends at the pub, his mother.  He’s always said I have a vivid imagination.

This is the kind of writing that makes me say, "Yes, I'll keep reading."  The Jacket Copy sinks the hook:

Marta and Hector have been married for a long time.  Through the good and bad; through raising a son and sending him off to life after university.  So long, in fact, that Marta finds it difficult to remember her life before Hector.  He has always taken care of her, and she has always done everything she can to be a good wife—as advised by a dog-eared manual given to her by Hector’s aloof mother on their wedding day.  But now, something is changing.  Small things seem off.  A flash of movement in the corner of her eye, elapsed moments that she can’t recall.  Visions of a blonde girl in the darkness that only Marta can see.  Perhaps she is starting to remember—or perhaps her mind is playing tricks on her.  As Marta’s visions persist and her reality grows more disjointed, it’s unclear if the danger lies in the world around her, or in Marta herself.  The girl is growing more real every day, and she wants something.

Rivers by Michael Farris Smith (Simon & Schuster):  In the opening pages of Michael Farris Smith's debut novel, a man saddles a horse and, armed with a double-barrel shotgun and a flashlight, ventures out into a dark storm full of lashing rain.  Nothing too out of the ordinary, right?  Keep reading.  What makes this interesting is the fact that the horse has been stabled in his living room and as they ride out into the surrounding urban neighborhood, we see that it's full of abandoned houses, downed power lines and "sloppy roads."  We get the distinct feeling that we're in a post-apocalyptic world a la The Road by Cormac McCarthy (indeed, Smith's prose style has some of the same hard-muscled, grim texture of McCarthy's words).  Rivers is a novel full of decay, starting with that spot-on-perfect cover design of a rusted metal sign bleeding onto a wall.  Here's the Jacket Copy to shine a flashlight on the dark plot:

Following years of catastrophic hurricanes, the Gulf Coast—stretching from the Florida panhandle to the western Louisiana border—has been brought to its knees.  The region is so punished and depleted that the government has drawn a new boundary ninety miles north of the coastline.  Life below the Line offers no services, no electricity, and no resources, and those who stay behind live by their own rules.  Cohen is one who stayed.  Unable to overcome the crushing loss of his wife and unborn child who were killed during an evacuation, he returned home to Mississippi to bury them on family land.  Until now he hasn’t had the strength to leave them behind, even to save himself.  But after his home is ransacked and all of his carefully accumulated supplies stolen, Cohen is finally forced from his shelter.  On the road north, he encounters a colony of survivors led by a fanatical, snake-handling preacher named Aggie who has dangerous visions of repopulating the barren region.  Realizing what’s in store for the women Aggie is holding against their will, Cohen is faced with a decision: continue to the Line alone, or try to shepherd the madman’s captives across the unforgiving land with the biggest hurricane yet bearing down—and Cohen harboring a secret that may pose the greatest threat of all.  Eerily prophetic in its depiction of a southern landscape ravaged by extreme weather, Rivers is a masterful tale of survival and redemption in a world where the next devastating storm is never far behind.

Blurbworthiness: “The lightning whips and the thunder bellows and the rain attacks in the water-stained pages of Michael Farris Smith’s Rivers, a hurricane-force debut novel that will soak you with its beautiful sadness and blow you away with its prescience about the weather-wild world that awaits us.”  (Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon)