Friday, April 14, 2023

"Salvage This World"

New from Little, Brown: Salvage This World: A Novel by Michael Farris Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

There was no rising from the dead and there was no hand to calm the storms and there was no peace in no valley.

In the hurricane-ravaged bottomlands of South Mississippi, where stores are closing and jobs are few, a fierce zealot has gained a foothold, capitalizing on the vulnerability of a dwindling population and a burning need for hope. As she preaches and promises salvation from the light of the pulpit, in the shadows she sows the seeds of violence.

Elsewhere, Jessie and her toddler, Jace, are on the run across the Mississippi/Louisiana line, in a resentful return to her childhood home and her desolate father. Holt, Jace's father, is missing and hunted by a brutish crowd, and an old man witnesses the wrong thing in the depths of night. In only a matter of days, all of their lives will collide, and be altered, in the maelstrom of the changing world.

At once elegiac and profound, Salvage This World journeys into the heart of a region growing darker and less forgiving, and asks how we keep going—what do we hold onto—in a land where God has fled.
Learn more about the book and author at Michael Farris Smith's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Rivers.

The Page 69 Test: Blackwood.

--Marshal Zeringue