A book launch Tuesday from 5-7 p.m. at the Rosenzweig Arts Center celebrates the release of “Desperation Road,” a new novel by Michael Farris Smith of Columbus. Published by Lee Boudreaux Books, a specialty fiction imprint with Little, Brown, the book is already a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, an Indie Next Great Reads List selection, a Gold Dagger Award nominee in the UK and an Amazon Best Book selection.
For Smith, the novel’s public debut is a welcome relief: He can finally talk about the compelling characters he’s lived with since the story concept took form years ago.
“It’s felt like it’s been forever. I had a draft of it pretty much at the same time I was working on ‘Rivers,'” said Smith, referring to his acclaimed first full-length novel released in 2013. “I’m excited to actually get to talk about it now and share the characters with other people.”
As in “Rivers,” Mississippi forms the backdrop for the story of Maben, hitchhiking along the interstate near the Louisiana line with her young daughter. A single garbage bag holds all they possess. Farther up the line, Russell — just out of the penitentiary at Parchman — is making his way home to Pike County, back to the dirt roads and hot nights he came from, back to pick up the threads, if he can survive the revenge festering in the brothers of the young man he killed 11 years before. When Maben and Russell finally come face to face, a gun between them, they are at first unaware that they are linked by the pain of the past.
“I was really just struck by this image of a woman and child walking along the interstate on a hot day, pretty much dragging all they had,” said Smith of the book’s inspiration. “It kind of grabbed ahold of me, and I wanted to find out who they were, why they were there and just started walking with them.”
In the details
Even minor characters receive full attention from Smith. He learned from writing “Rivers” how every single player has their own life.
Descriptive settings are vivid, in part because the novel is set in and around McComb and Magnolia, the area Smith lived in from about the age of 11.
“Those are my old back roads,” he said. “I think I wasted a lot of hours riding around on them; I know them well.”
In the end, “Desperation Road,” its author said, is about courage and love. “I don’t mean romantic love, but love for humanity, for someone who’s in need.”
Smith’s storytelling has been praised as masterful, shapely, poetic, lean and visceral by early reviewers.
“Smith is one of the best writers of his generation, and this very well may be his best work — taut, tense and impossible to put down,” said Tom Franklin, author of “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter” and winner of a Gold Dagger Award.
Even as one novel is released, Smith’s next, “The Fighter,” is set to come out in April 2018.
“I’ve been in a really good creative place for the last couple of years, and I’m learning to take advantage of that,” the author said. “I swear I think 90 percent of it is just having an idea that you’re emotional about and that you’re interested in.”
Tuesday’s launch, open to the community, kicks off a book signing tour through at least seven states in the next two months alone. Smith will have first editions on hand to sign. Refreshments will be served.
Read more about “Desperation Road” at michaelfarrissmith.com.
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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