Hello Down There

Michael Parker author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:John F Blair Publisher

Published:10th Oct '24

Should be back in stock very soon

Hello Down There cover

  • Three-city tour in NC, pairing author with most prominent writers in the area
  • Will pitch craft essays about looking back to the beginning of a writer's career
  • Goodreads giveaway

Haunted by a secret tragedy, Edwin, son of the richest family in a small Southern town, fights to overcome his addiction to morphine and face the truth that his parents have worked to obscure. 

This timeless debut novel of master Southern storyteller Michael Parker takes readers to a small Southern town in the 1950s where Edwin Keane suffers from the lasting effects of a horrible accident—a broken back, a morphine addiction, and a town of enabling eccentrics. Redemption comes in the form of a young woman—the daughter of a poor farmer—and a couple of the town’s most interesting outcasts. Parker is an amazing writer. His narrative style is both lyrical and economical, making this novel a true Southern gothic classic.

“This is Southern gothic intrigue and eccentricity at its best, with language playing an integral part in the action. In Parker's intensely imaginative world, metaphor can be addictive, stories have the power to free stultified lives and telling the truth can redeem the sins of the past. Rich and compassionate, his is a memorable story.”—Publishers Weekly

“Parker joins the ranks of outstanding Southern novelists with this well-written first novel, set in the early 1950s in fictional Trent, North Carolina, a small town with its old-moneyed families, sycophantic merchants, and dirt-poor working people. Parker's unusual but never gimmicky narrative style is well suited to a set of characters and a series of events worthy of Flannery O'Connor. A welcome debut; recommended for all fiction collections.”—Library Journal

ISBN: 9781958888223

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

273 pages