A Tree Born Crooked - Softcover

Post, Steph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0990338975 ISBN 13: 9780990338970

Publisher: Pandamoon Publishing, 2014

This specific ISBN edition is currently not available.

"Into the land of lacquered baby gators and OxyContin stashed behind the fridge--where even a plastic Santa in the lawn has been kicked over and wears a dented-in cheek. Steph Post brings a big heart and a close eye to this gritty story of ill-fated plans to knock off the safe house of a local mob. The result is a breathless chase through trailer parks, bars and motels that sweeps you in as you spiral down. Think of Flannery O'Connor writing season two of True Detective." -Will Chancellor, author of A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall "A man reluctantly returning to his small, rural hometown; the legacies of the past impinging on the present; crazy men with guns -- this is compelling Florida grit with echoes of the late great Harry Crews. Steph Post's A Tree Born Crooked is a wonderful debut." -Leonard Chang, author of Triplines and staff writer for FX's Justified "A novel about family dysfunction in the dark areas of America's most financially distressed populations. This is the story of a character fighting to be redeemed by love." -Nayomi Munaweera, author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors. "With A TREE BORN CROOKED, Steph Post delivers a 12-gauge blast of country noir from the gun-shaped state, a grit-rich tale of blood and citrus sure to have you recalling the rough beauty of Daniel Woodrell's work." -Taylor Brown, author of In the Season of Blood and Gold. James Hart, with a tough-as-nails exterior and an aching emptiness inside, does not want to go home. Yet when James receives a postcard from his mother, Birdie Mae, informing him of his father's death, he bites the bullet and returns to the rural and stagnant town of Crystal Springs, Florida, a place where dreams are born to die. James is too late for Orville's funeral, but just in time to become ensnared in the deadly repercussions of his younger brother Rabbit's life of petty crime. When Rabbit is double crossed by his cousin in a robbery-turned-murder, James and a local bartender, the unsettling and alluring Mar

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Review

PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF STEPH POST "WALK IN THE FIRE slings the Cannon family back on the page like a Molotov cocktail through a window. Few writers could coax a cast of characters this vast onto a single stage and orchestrate their story with such mastery. Post own the genre of North Florida noir." ―David Joy, author of Where the Light Tends to Go and The Weight Of This World "Post combines classical genre tropes with a touch of Harry Crews-style Southern gothic in this terrific crime novel." ―Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "Steph Post's WALK IN THE FIRE is a wonderful accomplishment, teeming with a refreshingly unexpected cast of characters, and an original story in an unlikely setting. It's a wild ride through the dark side of the sunshine state." ―David Swinson, author of The Second Girl and Crime Song "Fascinating...a solid actioner with some tasty trimmings." ―Booklist "With wicked dexterity Steph Post gets at the deepness in living and loving, as well as the good and bad within us all. But WALK IN THE FIRE also takes us to dark places where evil reigns and the characters struggle with their worst and best intentions. Unputdownable crime fiction with a Southern Twist, WALK IN THE FIRE will continually surprise you with the speed of its plot and the mythic proportions of the story it unfolds." ―Natalie S. Harnett, author of The Hollow Ground "We tend to think of Florida as happy, warm, and sunny, but in Steph Post's wonderfully written new novel, A Walk in the Fire, she shows us a slew of cold-blooded folks and dark places. She writes characters so well I was very happy, after tearing through the book, to remember they only existed on the page. Excellent." ―Erik Storey, author of Nothing Short of Dying "Steph Post writes with an intensity all her own. Greed, power, and desperation collide to make us ask, what choices do we make when it seems like none are left? Walk in the Fire captures backwoods Florida in all its grit and glory. This is a superbly original thriller―as sleek, wild, and dangerous as any rattlesnake." ―Erica Wright, author of The Red Chameleon "Choose your superlative: compelling, exciting, thrilling. They all apply. In Walk in the Fire, Steph Post delivers more of her trademark style with a scorching plot burning around a beating heart and compelling characters you won't soon forget. The perfect blend of backwoods crime and family drama, southern fried and served hot." ―Eric Beetner, author of Rumrunners and Leadfoot Praise for LIGHTWOOD by Steph Post "Steph Post's prose is lyrical and evocative. Her depiction of hardscrabble life in rural Florida is so effective, you'll wanna lock the doors and crank up the AC. But where LIGHTWOOD truly excels is in illuminating the ties that bind―and stretching them well beyond their breaking point." ―Chris Holm, award-winning author of The Killing Kind "Brilliant...Lightwood solidifies Steph Post as the official voice of working class literature in Florida, akin to what Daniel Woodrell has done for Missouri, or Ron Rash for the Carolinas." ―Brian Panowich, bestselling author of Bull Mountain "Post paints a large, vivid cast...Post's Florida is rather farther north than the world of Carl Hiaasen's fiction, but they share the dark comedy, intricate plotting and strong sense of paltry sin and mordant evil. Readers who like Hiaasen should find "Lightwood" well to their taste." ―Wilmington Star-News "Grabs the attention and offers up some memorable lines. (Post) proves that even a former prison inmate can rise up to be a strange, yet believable hero." ―Suspense Magazine "With spot-on characterizations and dialogue, Post explores the strength of family, religion, and vengeance in an absorbing literary mystery." ―Booklist "(A) gritty, propulsive crime novel...Lightwood keeps up a headlong pace as the Cannons, the Scorpions, Sister Tulah and other forces clash brutally all around Judah and Ramey. You might not want to visit Silas in real life, but it makes a fine setting for this twisted and compelling tale." ―Tampa Bay Times

About the Author

Steph Post is a tried and true Florida native. Not palm-tree-laden-fruity-drink-tropical-shirt-and-sandals South Florida, but backwoods-on-a-creek-deer-flies-and-alligator-ridden North Florida. Her adventurous childhood growing up in just such a precarious landscape has led to a lifetime of dauntless creativity and the Scrappy mentality that she can achieve just about anything if she sets her mind to it.

This somewhat reckless outlook has led to a Bachelor’s degree in English from Davidson College, numerous waitressing and bartending gigs, a penchant for writing long academic papers on punk rock and Alice in Wonderland, a Master’s degree in Graduate Liberal Studies from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, the acquisition of six slightly deranged mutts and an extremely tolerant husband, two novels, a house in St. Petersburg, Florida and a fulfilling job as a high school teacher at a performing arts school in Tampa.

Spice up this timeline with the knowledge that she has also been a recipient of the Patricia Cornwell creative writing scholarship, winner of the Vereen Bell award for short fiction, semi-finalist for the Big Moose prize for fiction, loves coffee, is obsessed with the television show Justified and enjoys reading classic literature when she’s not too busy being a badass, and you should have a pretty good picture of who you’re dealing with here. Like the characters she writes about, Steph Post is vulnerable and volatile, fearless and fierce. She hopes you enjoy her work.

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