Latest
- The Daily Beast picks Satan Is Real as one of This Week’s Hot Reads.
- Review of Satan Is Real from the Hartford Courant.
- Review of Satan Is Real from the Associated Press (via the San Francisco Chronicle).
- Interview with the Uprooted Music Review.
- Review of Satan is Real from Knoxville.com.
- Review of Satan is Real from The Wall Street Journal.
- Review of Satan Is Real and Charlie Louvin: Still Rattlin’ the Devil’s Cage from The Tennessean.
- Counting down some of my favorite Louvin Brothers songs at The New Yorker‘s Book Bench blog.
- Review of Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers from The Drowning Machine.
- Los Angeles Times feature article about Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers.
Pike
Douglas Pike is no longer the murderous hustler he was in his youth, but reforming hasn’t made him much kinder. He’s just living out his life in his Appalachian hometown, working odd jobs with his partner, Rory, hemming in his demons the best he can. And his best seems just good enough until his estranged daughter overdoses and he takes in his twelve-year-old granddaughter, Wendy.
Just as the two are beginning to forge a relationship, Derrick Kreiger, a dirty Cincinnati cop, starts to take an unhealthy interest in the girl. Pike and Rory head to Cincinnati to learn what they can about Derrick and the death of Pike’s daughter, and the three men circle, evenly matched predators in a human wilderness of junkie squats, roadhouse bars and homeless Vietnam vet encampments.
“Whitmer’s writing is swift, brutal, precise poetry, formed into the shape of people– breathing, hateful, murderous, vulnerable people that I care about deeply now. His characters are broken to begin with, and yet he breaks them open again and again, each time revealing a darker, thicker black sludge inside, and yet, this is also a story about innocence and trying to protect what tiny amount there is. There isn’t a trace of sentimentality in here, but whatever tiny embers of warmth that are to be found in this devastated landscape (a landscape so bleak it approaches, at time, allegory, and yet remains disturbingly visceral), those embers are completely earned and the meager heat thrown off by them all the more valuable because of it. I feel covered in blood.”
–Charles Yu, author of Third Class Superhero and How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
“This is what noir is, what it can be when it stops playing nice–blunt force drama stripped down to the bone, then made to dance across the page.”
–Stephen Graham Jones, author of Demon Theory and Ledfeather.
Buy Pike from an indie bookstore, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or PM Press.
Now Available
Satan is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers
Get ready for one of America’s great untold stories: the true saga of the Louvin Brothers, a mid-century Southern gothic Cain and Abel and one of the greatest country duos of all time. The Los Angeles Times called them “the most influential harmony team in the history of country music,” but Emmylou Harris may have hit closer to the heart of the matter, saying “there was something scary and washed in the blood about the sound of the Louvin Brothers.” For readers of Johnny Cash’s irresistible autobiography and Merle Haggard’s My House of Memories, no country music library will be complete without this raw and powerful story of the duo that everyone from Dolly Parton to Gram Parsons described as their favorites: the Louvin Brothers.
Pre-order Satan is Real:The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.
More about Satan is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers.
Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail!
Burn, Baby, Burn.
An incendiary mixture of genres and voices, this collection of short stories compiles a unique set of work that revolves around riots, revolts, and revolution. From the turbulent days of unionism in the streets of New York City during the Great Depression to a group of old women who meet at their local café to plan a radical act that will change the world forever, these original and once out-of-print stories capture the various ways people rise up to challenge the status quo and change up the relationships of power. Ideal for any fan of noir, science fiction, and revolution and mayhem, this collection includes works from Sara Paretsky, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Cory Doctorow, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Summer Brenner.
“‘Cincinnati Lou’ by Benjamin Whitmer was, for me, the big discovery in this anthology. The story’s protagonist, Derrick Kreiger, is a fascinating scumbag you will want to read more about — and luckily, it looks like Whitmer’s debut novel Pike features the same main character. Based on ‘Cincinnati Lou’ I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for more works by this author.”
–Stefan Raets, TOR.COM
Buy Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! from an indie bookstore, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or PM Press.