My Debut Novel
“The Walls Are Closing In On Us”
will be published by
Malarkey Books
on March 3, 2026
George, a middle-aged, half-Choctaw and half-white man, is dying from a snakebite and the stab wounds of a failed lynching beside a river hundreds of miles miles from where he was born. As he inches closer to death and relives the moments of his life that got him here, George must make amends with the ghosts of his past. A life of migration, endurance in the face of grief and the tightening grip of consequence is pieced together through his memories.
The Walls Are Closing In On Us - loosely based on my great grandfather - propels George across the American South as he is forced to steal a new identity and journey far from home until he can no longer hide from the crime of survival he committed as a teenager.
Read an excerpt published in Revolution John Journal:
Ferris Wheel
He smelled dough frying and clouds of powdered sugar.
He smelled cotton candy and located it in view quickly as a small child was handed some blue and red on a paper stick.
He saw bright and flashing lights on signs that said things like “world’s smallest pony” and “Mississippi’s best frog legs” and “Best Photographer in Town” that were clearly meant to draw people in, and looked to be working by the lines in front of them.
He saw young fathers with little children on their shoulders. He heard the children shout things like “Pa, look, you can ride a horsey over there!” As they shouted, he saw the trail of sugar around their little mouths. He saw the sweat on the fathers’ foreheads.
He saw women with all kinds of colorful dresses on and big hats with veils on them and big fans to blow air on their faces and their hair out of the way of their eyes.
In the meantime…
Read some other great Malarkey Books, like: