Mixing pathos and humor in equal measure, East of Denver is
an unflinching novel of rural America, a poignant, darkly funny tale
about a father and son finding their way together as their livelihood
inexorably disappears.
“I was driving from Denver to the farm with a dead cat in the back seat of my car.”
When Stacey “Shakespeare” Williams arrives at his family’s farm in eastern Colorado, he finds more than just a cat that needs burying. His widowed and senile father, Emmett, is living in squalor, and Unabelle, the elderly neighbor who’d been caring for him, lies dead behind the locked bathroom door— between Emmett’s senility and Shakespeare’s anosmia, neither man detected the smell.
With no job and no prospects, Shakespeare suddenly finds himself
caretaker to both his dad and the farm. They have no money, the land is
fallow, and a local banker has cheated his father out of the majority of
the farm equipment as well as his beloved Cessna. Shakespeare falls in
with an unlikely clique of former classmates: Vaughn Atkins, a
paraplegic confined to his mother’s basement; Carissa McPhail, an
overweight bank teller who pitches for the local softball team; and
longtime bully D. J. Beckman, who now deals drugs in small-town Dorsey.
Facing the loss of the farm, Shakespeare hatches a half-serious plot
with Emmett and his fellow misfits to rob the very bank that has stolen
their future.
East of Denver is a remarkably assured, sharply observed, and utterly memorable debut.
Learn a bit about Greg Hill HERE.
And then come meet the man himself at 7:30 pm on July 5, 2012, at our Colfax Avenue Store. He will be reading, discussing and signing his debut novel in the lower level events space.
“I was driving from Denver to the farm with a dead cat in the back seat of my car.”
When Stacey “Shakespeare” Williams arrives at his family’s farm in eastern Colorado, he finds more than just a cat that needs burying. His widowed and senile father, Emmett, is living in squalor, and Unabelle, the elderly neighbor who’d been caring for him, lies dead behind the locked bathroom door— between Emmett’s senility and Shakespeare’s anosmia, neither man detected the smell.
With no job and no prospects, Shakespeare suddenly finds himself
caretaker to both his dad and the farm. They have no money, the land is
fallow, and a local banker has cheated his father out of the majority of
the farm equipment as well as his beloved Cessna. Shakespeare falls in
with an unlikely clique of former classmates: Vaughn Atkins, a
paraplegic confined to his mother’s basement; Carissa McPhail, an
overweight bank teller who pitches for the local softball team; and
longtime bully D. J. Beckman, who now deals drugs in small-town Dorsey.
Facing the loss of the farm, Shakespeare hatches a half-serious plot
with Emmett and his fellow misfits to rob the very bank that has stolen
their future.East of Denver is a remarkably assured, sharply observed, and utterly memorable debut.
Learn a bit about Greg Hill HERE.
And then come meet the man himself at 7:30 pm on July 5, 2012, at our Colfax Avenue Store. He will be reading, discussing and signing his debut novel in the lower level events space.
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