Salvage This World
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
In Michael Farris Smith's latest "riveting" epic, a young woman returns home with her child to her ghost-haunted father, while a religious extremist hunts the stormridden territory to find the girl who may be the region's savior. (Laird Hunt, National Book Award-nominated author of Zorrie and Neverhome)
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, capitalizing 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.
Garden & Gun Top Reads of 2023 • Bibliolifestyle Best Literary Fiction of 2023 • Southern Living Southern Writers to Read Right Now
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Smith (Nick) melds fire and brimstone with the ravages of hurricanes in this evocative noir of the Mississippi Delta. Jessie raises her young son Jace with Holt, who works as a roustabout for a traveling revival meeting, the Temple of Pain and Glory. The temple's sinister minister, Elser, goes on a tear after a set of keys goes missing, claiming they were linked to a divine revelation. Elser suspects Holt of the theft, prompting her shotgun-toting disciples to chase Jessie out, and Jessie flees with Jace to her childhood home in Louisiana. There, she reconnects with her estranged but caring father, Wade, an offshore driller who is out of work due to frequent storms. Smith colors in Elser's backstory, showing how she gave hope to Holt and others amid devastation. Now, Holt risks everything to protect Jessie and Jace, fearing Elser's followers will kill them. Before it's all over, the bloody chain of events drags all involved to "the Bottom," a gothic hinterland of local legend. Smith perfectly depicts a landscape of dwindling resources and limited prospects, where crime turns out to be the most expedient solution. There's plenty of human drama in this gritty literary thriller.
