Hello Down There

A young aristocrat paralyzed by morphine and disillusion. A beguiling teenager from the poor side of the tracks. A love affair that rouses a drowsy North Carolina town to social civil war. In his luminous first novel, Michael Parker recreates with subtle detail and sharp sensuality the texture and nuance of a tobacco town in 1952, a community caught in its own slow decay. Hello Down There weaves suspense and romance into a haunting story of passion gone wrong, as its rich cast of characters - the druggist who claims to see through every deception; the stoic janitor who longs for his abandoned farm; the town's grande dame, who wields her prominence like a weapon; the imaginative eleven-year-old whose love for his sister wrenches him away from her - circles around the couple on currents of loyalty and rage. This saga of small-town life illuminates the crucial conflicts that mark all of us: conflicts between different classes, between parent and child, between body and heart. Michael Parker explores the dark underside of the Southern obsession with family, poignantly revealing the desires that drive and define us.