Southern Literary Fiction

With this critically acclaimed debut collection, Frank Bill announces himself as an author of fiercely defined vision. In these vivid tales, Bill’s southern Indiana proves a literary destination of immense nuance, even as his mostly working-class characters cry out in voices that cannot be denied.

Beth is a creative, contemplative soul and a loving mom. She is at a crossroads in her marriage and without a clear sense of her gifts and inherent worth. When her spirited Aunt Ro falls while turning to toss a coin in the Trevi Fountain in Rome, Beth embarks on a journey that leads to her ancestral village in Italy, the discovery of a family secret, and a new understanding of herself.

Dr. Frederick Eichner, world-renowned dermatologist, is visited by the entrancingly irritating Felix Treevly who comes to him as a patient and stays as an obsession. Prosaic incidents blossom into bizarre developments with the sharpened reality of dreams as the spectral Mr. Treevly leads the doctor into a series of increasingly weird situations. With the assistance of a drunken private detective, a mad judge, a car crash, a game show called What’s My Disease, and a hashish party, Treevly drives Eichner to madness and mayhem.

For three strangers whose paths will cross, the storm hasn’t even reached its peak. Two of them are the kind of climate scientists no one ever listens to in disaster movies. The third, against even icier opposition, has just moved to the Magnolia State to come out. Soon they’ll all be pushed closer to the edge, where the bracing winds of cataclysmic change can be so wildly liberating.

The last thing Sandy Coker needs is love. In the 1990s, she's one of very few women tapped by the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department to be a lead inspector in the lonesome, cutthroat world of heavy construction. Contractors she minds are transforming the rugged Ozarks and driving new interstate through mountains, treacherous and wild. She holds the key to millions of dollars in compensation for work that can cost not only livelihoods, but lives. When she meets dirt foreman Wayne Sheridan of Missouri, stars collide and, for both of them, the timing could not be worse.

Her family was to be her legacy, until an angry mob murdered her only son.