The Brewing Tempest

I was fourteen the first time I came in contact with a real storm. It cut a line right down the center of my life, pulling my sister and mother away from me and cleanly dividing that year into a before and after so radically different that I've come to think of fourteen as not only the longest year of my life, but also the most important because it was the last year of childhood and the first year of the rest of my life, a life that would be forever marked as different in subtle and insidious ways from the people around me.

Fourteen was the year my mother and sister disappeared, the year I lost my mind. The year I learned secrets that will stay with me until I am no longer able to think of them.

And fourteen, most of all, was the year of the storm.

"A dark and mysterious southern-gothic story with hints of Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter and Stephen King’s novella The Body, John Mantooth’s voice is masculine and powerful, flavoring the pages with the Alabama wilderness, the turmoil of family and how all of these elements work to shape and nurture teenage boys into men."

— Frank Bill, author of Crimes in Southern Indiana
and Donnybrook