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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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OVER THE PLAIN HOUSES

Julia Franks

This spellbinding debut by Julia Franks is the story of an Appalachian woman intrigued by the possibility of change and escape - stalked by a Bible-haunted man who fears his government and stakes his integrity upon an older way of life.
It's 1939 and the federal government has sent USDA agent Virginia Furman into the North Carolina mountains to instruct families on modernizing their homes and farms.

There she meets farm wife Irenie Lambey, who is immediately drawn to the lady agent's self-possession. Already, cracks are emerging in Irenie's fragile marriage to Brodis, an ex-logger turned fundamentalist preacher: She has taken to night ramblings through the woods to escape her husband's bed, storing strange keepsakes in a mountain cavern. To Brodis, these are all the signs that Irenie--tiptoeing through the dark in her billowing white nightshirt--is practicing black magic.

When Irenie slips back into bed with a kind of supernatural stealth, Brodis senses that a certain evil has entered his life, linked to the lady agent, or perhaps to other, more sinister forces.

Working in the stylistic terrain of Amy Greene and Bonnie Jo Campbell, this mesmerizing debut by Julia Franks is the story of a woman intrigued by the possibility of change, escape, and reproductive choice--stalked by aBible-haunted man who fears his government and stakes his integrity upon an older way of life. As Brodis chases his demons, he brings about a final act of violence that shakes the entire valley. In this spellbinding Southern story, Franks bares the myths and mysteries that modernity can't quite dispel.
Available products
Book

Published 2016-05-01 by Hub City Press

Book

Published 2016-05-01 by Hub City Press

Comments

NPR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 MAY 2016 INDIE NEXT PICK CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS Best Fiction of the Year 2016

A spellbinding story of witchcraft anddisobedience.

Franks' debut is a thoughtful exploration of one woman's quest to live life on her own terms.

A riveting debut... Franks is a promising new writer.

Julia Franks writes wonderfully and knowledgeably about nature, with a fine eye for the textures of the physical world. Her ear for the diction and rhythm and creativity of Southern mountain speech delights on every page.

Julia wrote an amazing piece for theThe New York Timesafter the book's publication.They gave her more than half a page (which is extremely valuable space in the Sunday paper!) Read more...

As Southern Appalachian women, we need to tell our own stories, and Julia Franks does this in prose as starkly beautiful as the Depression-era mountain landscape her characters inhabit.

An absorbing human drama of marital discontent, misunderstanding, violence, and desperation. Over the Plain Houses had me enthralled from beginning to end.