HOLLOW GROUND

A mature, eloquent first novel that probes the limits and powers of love as a man reluctantly returns to his hometown to find his father nearly dead, his son nearly grown, and the woman he loved not ready to forgive or forget.

Gary Solomon comes back to Zinctown, Tennessee, a town defined by the mine that ran beneath it, with no clear sense of purpose. A failed marriage, a number of sheriff’s jobs, and different places to hang his hat haven’t erased memories of his father, Bid, larger than life and clear in his preference for Gary’s brother, who died before Gary was born. Nor has absence erased the feeling he had for Brenda, whom he abandoned when she was pregnant with their child. That child, Taft, is now 14 and about to embark on his own romantic adventure—and, never having heard anything about him from his mother, is unsure how to handle the father who shows up in his living room. Gary is even less sure what to do, especially after Bid dies of the cancer he’s been hiding from everyone, and after a local legend, Moody Myers, whom Gary relies on to help him find his way back into the community, goes missing. As Gary withdraws into himself, conducting a private search along the river for Moody, Taft goes searching too, for answers that only experience can give him. He gets into a dangerous situation with Brenda’s daredevil ex-con brother, then finds himself in another as a mine cave-in turns the drive-in into what happens to be a smoking pit and buries him. As Taft comes of age in his way, his parents try to find their own way through the years of regret and disillusion to a life that can sustain them all.

An extraordinary, engrossing debut.