Joel Martin is a twenty-four year old construction worker who lives with his mother and struggles to provide for his four year old son. Longing to break free from the bleak confines of Langley, Pennsylvania, the dried-up industrial town where he has lived his entire life, he commits a series of burglaries with his brother, Derek, in the hope of finding more. Faced with legal troubles, problems with his ex, and the possibility of being separated from his son, Joel begins to unravel, and the unthinkable occurs when his life intersects with Christopher Roche, a freshman at Waylan University. Kings Row explores class disparities as they exist today and the tragic events that inevitably unfold when people are driven by anger and resentment. Rich in character and carefully observed, Kings Row is a gripping story of two Americas growing farther apart.
PRAISE FOR KINGS ROW:
“In the utterly absorbing Kings Row, Jeffrey Voccola shows himself to be a master of the faultlines of class and of all the ways, large and small, in which people hurt each other. I couldn’t stop turning the pages of this suspenseful novel. Kings Row is a stellar debut.” —Margot Livesey, author of Mercury and The House on Fortune Street
“This beautifully-paced, eloquent and suspenseful novel is full of persuasive, sharply observed psychology, sociology, and topology, and an honest voicing of working class people, male and female....Voccola writes with dead-pan lyricism, an attentive ear, and generous heart.” —DeWitt Henry, author of Sweet Marjoram and co-founder of Ploughshares
“From its masterful opening chapter on, Kings Row captures the divides and resentments that have brought us to this moment in America. This novel is a deep study of people unsure of their positions in their personal lives and in the larger sphere of change. Voccola writes beautifully and compassionately, even about tragedy." —Tim Parrish, author of Fear and What Follows: The Violent Education of a Christian Racist, A Memoir
“Kings Row masterfully deconstructs a killing deeply emblematic of the class and race issues that plague our time. With lyrical, heart-piercing realism, Jeffrey Voccola evokes our deepest compassion for these ill-fated characters, showing us ourselves reflected in college students struggling to belong, in displaced working class communities. Provocative and suspenseful, Kings Row introduces an exciting new writer to watch.” —Wayne Harrison, author of The Spark and the Drive and Wrench and Other Stories
Jeffrey Voccola is an Associate Professor of fiction writing at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. He received an MFA from Emerson College. His stories have been published in numerous literary journals, including The Cabinet, Noctua Review, Cottonwood, Beacon Street Review, Folio, Whirligig, and others. His essays have been published in Inside Sources, The Las Vegas Sun, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He has received several scholarships and awards, including the AWP WC&C Scholarship for Fiction in 2008, and tuition scholarships to Aspen Summer Words and the Prague Summer Program. He has attended workshops at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Sewanee Writers' Conference. In 2011, he was awarded a month-long residency at Prairie Center of the Arts.
