Join us Tues., Mar. 14, 5:00 pm as Michael Farris Smith discusses and signs copies of his new novel Desperation Road (Lee Boudreaux Books, hb., 304 pp., $26).
In the vein of Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone and the works of Ron Rash, Desperation Road takes place in a tough-and-tumble Mississippi town where drugs, whiskey, guns, and the desire for revenge violently intersect.
After completing an 11 year jail sentence, Russell Gaines believes his debt to society has been paid. But when he returns home, he discovers that revenge lives and breathes all around him. Meanwhile, a woman named Maben and her young daughter trudge along the side of the interstate. Desperate and exhausted, the pair spend their last dollar on a room for the night, a night that ends with Maben holding a pistol and a dead deputy. 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.
Michael Farris Smith is a native Mississippian who has spent time living abroad in France and Switzerland. He is the recipient of the 2014 Mississippi Author Award and has been awarded the Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, the Transatlantic Review Award for Fiction, and the Alabama Arts Council Fellowship Award for Literature. His short fiction has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his essays have appeared in The New York Times, Catfish Alley, Deep South Magazine, and more. He lives in Columbus, Mississippi, with his wife and two daughters.
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