Evoking visceral images such as a fire-and-brimstone preacher ranting and a deep-voiced deejay spinning country music and reading the local news of fish fries, car wrecks, and church bake sales, this tale digs beneath the surface of the Southern Baptist Church, commercial radio, and small-town manhood. Seated next to each other on a bus headed out of Las Vegas, Southern Baptist preacher and radio evangelist, Ezekiel Blizzard Jr., and country-western deejay, Timber Goodman, would not initially appear to be birds of the same feather. Yet as their ride through the desert progresses, and their hardscrabble stories of childhood, drinking, drug use, gambling, radio, religion, and even violence in the "Christ-haunted South" unfold, they discover their unusual mutual quests for redemption. "Sam Starnes has crafted a beguiling, often hilarious tale of two American seekers who end up finding truths they hadn't imagined on a bus ride through the desert. Their individual stories are spun in rich, evocative prose that takes the reader into a world of radio evangelists who fall far short of practicing what they preach. Just when we think we understand these sinners comes a shocking denouement that makes us wonder if it's only coincidence that we meet the significant people in our lives. This is one of those novels that resonates long after the final page," said Alice Elliott Dark, author of "In the Gloaming," a short story selected by John Updike for the Best American Short Stories of the Century, and the novel Think of England.

Calling

Literature & Fiction

Starnes, Joe Samuel

United States

Jefferson Pr Llc

December 1, 1955: Flood gates are poised to slam shut on a concrete dam straddling the Oogasula River, creating a lake that will submerge a forgotten crossroads and thousands of acres of woodlands in rural Georgia. The novel unfolds in one day’s action as viewed through the eyes of Elmer Blizzard, a troubled ex-deputy; Mrs. McNulty, a lonely widow who refuses to leave her doomed shack by the river; her loyal, aging dog, Percy; and a rapacious politician, State Senator Aubrey Terrell, for whom the new lake is named. A story of land grabs, loss, wounded families, bitterness, hypocrisy, violence and revenge in the changing South, Fall Line is populated by complex characters who want to do the right thing but don’t know how. Joe Samuel Starnes’s novel is a memorable, beautiful, and heartbreaking tale of a backwater hamlet’s damaged people and its transformed landscape.

Fall Line

Contemporary

NewSouth Books

The original redneck Rocky of tennis novels.” NoirCon Comes with highest recommendation.” Jon L. Wertheim, Tennis Channel and Sports Illustrated Red Dirt is the story of Jaxie Skinner, an unlikely professional tennis player from a blue-collar family in the sticks of rural Georgia who takes up the game at the age of three when his father scrapes a court out of the red clay behind their farmhouse. He is a natural, rising to the top of junior tennis, and at eighteen has great success at the French Open. He falls as quickly as he rose, however, when troubles back home and injuries arise. He quits the game for years, but then mounts a comeback, struggling for almost a decade in the unglamorous, low-paying minor leagues of tennis, often living out of his van, before getting one last big shot. A fascinating study of tennis, its demands and tactics, as well as a look at the insular and often selfish character required to reach the pinnacle of the sport. Red Dirt is the Rocky of tennis novels. I enjoyed it immensely . . . a marvelous job of pivoting the plot and making it such a good story.” Frank Deford, Sports Illustrated A metaphor for life’s vicissitudes and our own fleeting awareness.” The Philadelphia Inquirer A comeback worth cheering.” Atlanta Magazine

Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel

Breakaway Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Starnes, Joe Samuel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Starnes, Joe Samuel