New fiction from Bethany W. Pope - an LBA-winning author,
and a finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Awards
They were named by the Huffington Post as 'one of the five
Expat poets to watch in 2016'.
Nicholas Lezard, writing for The Guardian, described their
latest poetry collection, Silage, as 'literature as salvation'.
Edwardian Florida. The swamplands of Tampa provide a
tough but good living for those men hardy enough to brave the
weather and the wildness. There are ripe pickings to be had
in bird hunting; egret feathers plucked by the sack-full and
sent away to adorn rich city-women's hats. Wives for these
rough hunters are ordered from catalogues, attractiveness
graded by cooking skills and hip-width.
When illness sweeps the area and the local minister dies,
his widow, his beloved Rose, succumbs to madness. His
daughter Joy must struggle to keep them both alive in what
has become a skeleton town, rotting into the swamp and
abandoned by all but the most ruthless.
Rich with visceral imagery, The Hungry and the Lost is a
novel in true Southern Gothic style, pitting the worlds of
myth and innocence against the rational grip of progress and
modernity.