Michael Farris Smith

Critically acclaimed novelist Michael Farris Smith pulls Nick Carraway out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this fascinating look into his life before Gatsby Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg, and into Gatsby's periphery, he was at the center of a very different story- one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I. Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed firsthand, Nick delays his return home, hoping to escape the questions he cannot answer about the horrors of war. Instead, he embarks on a transcontinental redemptive journey that takes him from a whirlwind Paris romance- doomed from the very beginning- to the dizzying frenzy of New Orleans- rife with its own flavor of debauchery and violence. An epic portrait of a truly singular era, and a sweeping, romantic story of self-discovery, this rich and imaginative novel breathes new life into a character that many know, but few have pondered deeply. Told with enough alcohol, heartbreak, and profound yearning to paralyze even the heartiest of Golden Age scribes, NICK reveals the man behind the narrator that has captivated readers for decades.

Nick

For years, Colburn has been haunted by his father's suicide and the rapid disintegration of his childhood home. As a teenager, Colburn fled Red Bluff, Mississippi, eager to escape his trauma and start fresh elsewhere. But when he returns to town as an adult, lured by an unshakable desire , he finds that his demons have only grown larger in his absence. In Red Bluff resides both a gift and a curse: Colburn meets and falls in love, only to have that love torn from him. The mystery of his lover's disappearance, he learns, is intertwined with that of a strange family living within the kudzu laden undergrowth of the countryside. Pulled back to his father's house, Colburn is forced to finally confront the truth. Delivered in propulsive and lyrical prose, Blackwood is the haunting story of a tortured young man, desperate for release from the strangle hold around his heart.

Blackwood

In a hurricane-ravaged Mississippi of the near future, a man who elects to remain behind when most people have fled the area is brutally attacked by two hitchhikers who steal his supplies, a crime that prompts him to pursue justice.

A Novel

Rivers

In the vein of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone and the works of Ron Rash, a novel set in a tough-and-tumble Mississippi town where drugs, whiskey, guns, and the desire for revenge violently intersect. For eleven years the clock has been ticking for Russell Gaines as he sat in Parchman Penitentiary in the Mississippi Delta. His sentence is now up for manslaughter, and he believes his debt has been paid. But when he returns to his South Mississippi hometown, he faces blood-thirsty revenge. Larry and Walt, older brothers of the young man Russell killed so many years ago, have had the calendar marked. They greet Russell the instant he steps off the bus with hard fists and dire promises. On the same day that Russell comes back, a homeless woman named Maben and her young daughter trudge along the side of the interstate under the punishing summer sun. Desperate and exhausted, the pair spends their last dollar on a room for the night, a night that ends with Maben running down a desolate back road holding a pistol, and a dead deputy sprawled across the asphalt. When Russell later rides up on the scene with the loaded shotgun he's gotten for protection tucked behind the seat of his father's truck, the eyes of the law can't help but look toward him. Along these dark back roads, lives twisted with regret intersect with violent and vengeful consequences as the differences between right and strong shift like the southern sky. DESPERATION ROAD, written in powerful and lyrical prose, is a story of troubled souls bound by a secret that stretches over the years and across the land.

Desperation Road

An Amazon Best Book of the Month An Indie Next Pick A Barnes & Noble Discover Pick One of Southern Living's Best Southern Books of 2017 In the vein of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone and the works of Ron Rash, a novel set in a tough-and-tumble Mississippi town where drugs, whiskey, guns, and the desire for revenge violently intersect. For eleven years the clock has been ticking for Russell Gaines as he sits in Parchman Penitentiary in the Mississippi Delta. His sentence is now up, and he believes his debt has been paid. But when he returns home, he soon discovers that revenge lives and breathes all around him. On the same day that Russell is released from prison, a woman named Maben and her young daughter trudge along the side of the interstate under the punishing summer sun. Desperate and exhausted, the pair spend their last dollar on a room for the night, a night that ends with Maben running through the darkness holding a pistol, and a dead deputy sprawled in the middle o the road in the glow of his own headlights. With the dawn, destinies collide, and Russell is forced to decide whose life he will save--his own or those of the woman and child. Delivered in powerful and lyrical prose, Desperation Road is a story of troubled souls twisted with regret and bound by secrets that stretch over the years and across the land.

Salvage This World

For years, Colburn has been haunted by his father's suicide and the rapid disintegration of his childhood home. As a teenager, Colburn fled Red Bluff, Mississippi, eager to escape his trauma and start fresh elsewhere. But when he returns to town as an adult, lured by an unshakable desire, he finds that his demons have only grown larger in his absence. In Red Bluff resides both a gift and a curse: Colburn meets and falls in love, only to have that love torn from him. The mystery of his lover's disappearance, he learns, is intertwined with that of a strange family living within the kudzu laden undergrowth of the countryside. Pulled back to his father's house, Colburn is forced to finally confront the truth.

'You will not be disappointed' - Daily Mail From the author of Desperation Road, longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award 2017 The acres and acres of fertile soil, the two-hundred year old antebellum house, both gone. And so is the woman who gave it to him. The foster mother who saved Jack Boucher from a childhood of abandonment now rests in a hospice. Her mind eroded by dementia, the family legacy she entrusted to Jack is now owned by banks and strangers. And Jack's mind has begun to fail, too, as concussion after concussion forces him to carry around a notebook of names that separate friend from foe. But in a single twisted night Jack is derailed. Losing the money that will clear his debt with the queen of Delta vice, and forcing Jack into the fighting pit one last time – the stakes nothing less than life or death. Praise for Michael Farris Smith 'Smith’s fiction is full of hard people in tough situations, but his obvious love of language and innately rhythmic prose lift his stories to a higher level' - Big Issue 'Every once in a while an author comes along who's in love with art and written language and imagery... writers like William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx. You can add Michael Farris Smith's name to the list' - James Lee Burke, New York Times bestselling author of Creole Belle and The Tin Roof Blowdown 'Cinema written all over it... A particularly good novel if you like whispering 'Sh*t...' in an incredulous voice' - Shortlist 'One of those wonderful and rare books that's both a page turner and a novel of great depth and emotion. The Fighter is Southern Noir at its finest ' - Ace Atkins, bestselling author of the Quinn Colson series 'The Fighter is a book I wish I'd written but am deeply grateful I got to read. It is a masterful portrait of place and character and how one influences the other, with language that is both brutal and tender at once' - Attica Locke, author of Black Water Rising and Pleasantville

The Fighter

'Exceptional' - Crime Review on The Fighter A crooked nose. Scar slices across his forehead. Jack Boucher, he whispered and he shook his head. You ain't nothing but a broken down dirty dog. Le Boucher, he said to himself in the rearview mirror. The butcher. Jack Boucher, a washed-up bare-knuckle fighter, is battling against decades of drug and alcohol abuse when he returns home to find his world in ruins. Set against the desolate backdrop of the Mississippi Delta, the foster mother who saved Jack as a child now rests in a hospice. Her mind eroded by dementia, the family legacy she entrusted to Jack is now owned by banks and strangers. And Jack's own mind is failing. Concussion after concussion has forced him to carry around a notebook of names warning him who can be trusted and who should be considered a foe. In a single twisted night, after losing the money that would have cleared his debt with the queen of Delta vice, Jack's life is quickly derailed. Forced into the fighting pit one last time, "Jack the Jaw" faces his biggest challenge yet as he must once again fight for his life and everything that was taken from him. A brilliant, gripping novel of endurance and redemption, The Fighter is set to be a major film in 2023 titled Rumble in the Dark starring actors Bella Thorne and Aaron Eckhart.

A dark Southern tale of desperate souls who've wound up on the road of poor choices, a messianic child with untold powers, and those out hunting her for their own reward, all drawn together by Michael Farris Smith's trademark mournful, spirit-gnawing prose. An old woman, riddled with dementia, walks off into the woods in the middle of the night. A light in the wood draws her to a campfire with two strange, dangerous men, who are there plotting a crime of as-yet-indeterminate purpose. The two men have a job to do. They are hunting something precious but have only been told: you'll know it when you see it. When they arrive at the place, an abandoned church cellar in the burned-out countryside, they find an answer they never could have predicted. Now, the job feels dubious, one that'll surely bring them to ruin. Yet if they're to go against orders, no step can be undone, and nothing can be taken back. In spare prose, Lay Your Armour Down reduces the epic to its most elemental. It charts the course of several broken people, all outrunning danger's dark fingers, and all brought together for one last chance at redemption.

Lay Your Armour Down

The small town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, but now seems stuck in a black-and-white photograph from days gone by. Unknowing, the town and its people are about to come alive again, awakening to nightmares, as ghostly whispers have begun to fill the night from the kudzu-covered valley that sits on the edge of town. When a vagabond family appears on the outskirts and twin boys and a woman go missing, disappearing beneath the vines, a man with his own twisted past struggles to untangle the secrets in the midst of the town trauma. This is a landscape of fear and ghosts, of regret and violence. It is a landscape transformed by the kudzu vines that have enveloped the hills around it, swallowing homes, cars, rivers, and hiding terrible secrets deeper still. Blackwood is the evil in the woods, the wickedness that lurks in all of us.

The acres and acres of fertile soil, the two-hundred-year-old antebellum house, all gone. And so is the woman who gave it to Jack, the foster mother only days away from dying, her mind eroded by dementia, the family legacy she entrusted to Jack now owned by banks and strangers. And Jack's mind has begun to fail, too. The decades of bare-knuckle fighting are now taking their toll, as concussion after concussion forces him to carry around a stash of illegal painkillers and a notebook of names that separate friend from foe and remind him of dangerous haunts to avoid. But in a single twisted night, he is derailed. Hijacked by a sleazy gambler out to settle a score, Jack loses the money that will clear his debt with Big Momma Sweet, the queen of Delta vice, whose deep backwoods playground offers sin to all those willing to pay. This same chain of events introduces an unlikely savior in the form of a sultry, tattooed carnival worker. Guided by what she calls her "church of coincidence," Annette pushes Jack toward redemption in her own free-spirited way, only to discover that the world of Big Momma Sweet is filled with savage danger.

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.

La vie de Nick Carraway. Avant Gatsby. Avant de se retrouver dans l'entourage de Daisy Buchanan et Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, comme nombre de ses compatriotes américains, s'est engagé pour défendre le territoire français durement frappé par la Première Guerre mondiale. Sur place, la désillusion est de taille : prisonnier d'un combat qui n'est pas le sien, errant seul à travers la violence des assauts et les spectres d'un passé qui ne le quitte jamais, il cherche désespérément une échappatoire à sa condition. Jusqu'au jour où, en permission à Paris, il rencontre Ella, une jeune fille excentrique, qui habite un grenier, au-dessus d'un théâtre. Troublé, Nick espère avoir trouvé le chemin de la rédemption. Il ignore encore que celle-ci ne s'offre qu'à ceux qui ont vraiment touché le fond. Michael Farris Smith s'empare de Gatsby le Magnifique, monument de la littérature américaine, pour mieux le faire sien. De Paris à la Nouvelle-Orléans, il mêle l'intime et l'histoire, et achève son récit quelques jours avant le début du livre de F. Scott Fitzgerald, que nous ne relirons plus jamais de la même façon.

A blistering novel of violence and deliverance set against the mythic backdrop of the Mississippi Delta. The acres and acres of fertile soil, the two-hundred-year-old antebellum house, all gone. And so is the woman who gave it to Jack, the foster mother only days away from dying, her mind eroded by dementia, the family legacy she entrusted to Jack now owned by banks and strangers. And Jack's mind has begun to fail, too. The decades of bare-knuckle fighting are now taking their toll, as concussion after concussion forces him to carry around a stash of illegal painkillers and a notebook of names that separates friend from foe. But in a single twisted night, Jack loses his chance to win it all back. Hijacked by a sleazy gambler out to settle a score, Jack is robbed of the money that will clear his debt with Big Momma Sweet -- the queen of Delta vice, whose deep backwoods playground offers sin to all those willing to pay -- and open a path that could lead him back home. Yet this sudden reversal of fortunes introduces an unlikely savior in the form of a sultry, tattooed carnival worker. Guided by what she calls her "church of coincidence," Annette pushes Jack toward redemption, only to discover that the world of Big Momma Sweet is filled with savage danger. Damaged by regret, crippled by twenty-five years of fists and elbows, heartbroken by his own betrayals, Jack is forced to step into the fighting pit one last time, the stakes nothing less than life or death. With the raw power and poetry of a young Larry Brown and the mysticism of Cormac McCarthy, Michael Farris Smith cements his place as one of the finest writers in the American literary landscape.

In the tradition of The Stranger and The Old Man and the Sea, this taut novella by critically acclaimed novelist Michael Farris Smith (Rivers, 2013) explores the human spirit and its capacity for faith and forgiveness in an imperfect world. What happens to a marriage when a child vanishes? Jon and Estelle walk the picturesque Paris streets, but are living through the cruelest of realties—the disappearance of their nine-year-old daughter Jennifer, abducted from the Musée D’Orsay during a class field trip. Jon spends his day slugging through bus terminals and metro halls, posting flyers of his daughter, while Estelle has become a recluse, unwilling to leave the apartment in case the telephone rings. Their relationship suffers as the passing time chips away at the hope of Jennifer’s return. Then, a free-spirited artist enters their life as unexpectedly as Jennifer has left it, luring Jon down a reckless path as he searches desperately for courage in the smallest signs. If their daughter is ever returned to them, will Jon and Estelle both be there to welcome her home?

Michael Farris Smith

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