Salvage This World

(Paperback)

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There was no rising from the dead and there was no hand to calm the storms and there was no peace in no valley.

In the hurricane-ravaged bottomlands of South Mississippi, where stores are closing and jobs are few, a fierce zealot has gained a foothold, capitalising 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.

Praise for Michael Farris Smith

'Smith is emerging as one of the great chroniclers of America's dispossessed' - Mail on Sunday on Blackwood

'Smith depicts a steamy American South redolent of lawless menace in sparse, simple, lyrical prose... You will not be disappointed' - Daily Mail on Desperation Road

'If you're a fan of Southern or Rural Noir - James Lee Burke, Daniel Woodrell, Donald Ray Pollock, the literary children of Flannery O'Connor - you'll feel uncomfortably at home' - Times on Blackwood

'Gripping... the novel rings fiercely true' - Financial Times on NICK

'Vividly imagined and suffused with pulsing narrative energy and an assured, atmospheric sense of period setting and speech' - Irish Times on NICK

'Vivid, visual, strong, poetic' - Herald on NICK

Reviews

With a cast of fierce, masterfully drawn characters set loose in gorgeous, hurricane-blasted landscapes, Salvage this World by Michael Farris Smith is riveting: I couldn't put it down -- Laird Hunt * Author of Zorrie and Neverhome *
Audaciously prophetic. Here's a near-future and all too plausible southern noir in which the lawlessness already creeping into American democracy has become the norm and in which preachers have abandoned Christ and instead are searching for the new climate Messiah, and the line between good and evil is not only very thin but completely effaced. A rollicking good (dark) read -- Brian Evenson * Author of LAST DAYS *
An exceptional storyteller in top form * Kirkus *
Smith (Nick) melds fire and brimstone with the ravages of hurricanes in this evocative noir of the Mississippi Delta * Publishers weekly *
Man, did I like this one. Southern, wet and gritty. Storm-filled and laced with fear and tension, as well as realistic and engaging characters, this world is grimly enticing. -- Joe Landsdale

Author Bio

Michael Farris Smith is the award-winning author of Salvage This World, NICK, Blackwood, The Fighter, Desperation Road, Rivers, and The Hands of Strangers. His novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, NPR, Southern Living, Garden & Gun, Book Riot and numerous other outlets, and have been named Indie Next, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. He has also written the feature film adaptations of his novels Desperation Road and The Fighter, titled for the screen as Rumble Through the Dark. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters.