There has been a long held tradition of romanticizing the humid nights and fast horseflesh of this region’s fame. Front porch swings, voices like butter and maybe a little dash or two of bourbon in the sweet tea, have all leant themselves to the glossy pages of magazines and the pens of screenwriters to conjure up a syrupy, southern fantasy on the river. Put down your Mint Julep and prepare for a fearless blow to the literary gut. Frank Bill shatters all saccharine facades in his debut book Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories. Carmichael’s Bookstore will host an event on Wednesday, September 7th at 7pm featuring Bill’s blistering account of the gritty world left behind after poverty and desperation have taken hold.
Bill’s Southern Indiana is not the small, sleepy sister-community over the bridge, but a homestead in heartland America struggling in the wake of the union jobs and family farms that have vanished. In a territory now riddled with meth labs and ravaged by backwoods gunrunners and bare-knuckle brawlers, Bill’s literary voice paints a haunting scene with a deep, authentic timbre. Described as “a ferocious debut that puts Frank Bill’s southern Indiana on the literary map next to Cormac McCarthy’s eastern Tennessee and Daniel Woodrell’s Missouri Ozarks” Bill delivers a hot-headed fist into modern American literature.
Stop by Carmichael’s Frankfort Avenue location for a chance to hear Bill’s words first hand. Starting at 7pm he will offer a reading, answer queries of the inquisitive and pen some signatures. Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories is published by Farrar Straus and Giroux and is available at both Carmichael’s Bookstore locations – or on the Carmichael’s website – for $15.00.
Grab copy, open a beer and be prepared to enter a side of our world where “we witness the unspeakable, yet are compelled to find sympathy for the depraved. ”
Carmichael’s Bookstore has two area locations: 1295 Bardstown Road and 2720 Frankfort Avenue
Visit Frank Bill’s event page on the Carmichael’s website for more information, or call the Frankfort Avenue store at 896-6950
Photo: Courtesy of Carmichael’s Bookstore Website www.carmichaelsbookstore.com
