Carry My Bones

A man kills his wife's loveralmost. The criminal is Gideon Banks, a sculptor of modest success who has finally realized that he is incapable of repairing his broken marriage. Now on the run from the law, Gid is joined by Merithis adopted, introverted sonand John Frederick White, and old turnip grower, the singer of a thousand songs, and Merit's best friend. For the length of a college football season the unlikely trio embarks on a quest along the highways and back roads of Alabama, laying bare in the process a landscape of poverty and isolation. This rural setting erodes when a rich stranger in Birmingham is enamored by their tale and agrees to take them in. Sheltered in a grand house, ever so close to being caught, Gid, Merit, and John Frederick must now confront both their personal struggles and a shocking past they have come to share. Prescient in its grasp of politics and social discontent in the present-day South, Carry My Bones is a bracing debut by a writer of rare empathy.