Southernmost

Product Description “A novel for our time, a courageous and necessary book.” —Jennifer Haigh, author of Heat and Light In this stunning novel about judgment, courage, heartbreak, and change, author Silas House wrestles with the limits of belief and the infinite ways to love. In the aftermath of a flood that washes away much of a small Tennessee town, evangelical preacher Asher Sharp offers shelter to two gay men. In doing so, he starts to see his life anew—and risks losing everything: his wife, locked into her religious prejudices; his congregation, which shuns Asher after he delivers a passionate sermon in defense of tolerance; and his young son, Justin, caught in the middle of what turns into a bitter custody battle. With no way out but ahead, Asher takes Justin and flees to Key West, where he hopes to find his brother, Luke, whom he’d turned against years ago after Luke came out. And it is there, at the southernmost point of the country, that Asher and Justin discover a new way of thinking about the world, and a new way of understanding love. Southernmost is a tender and affecting book, a meditation on love and its consequences. Review A 2018 Booklist Editors' Choice Pick One of Paste Magazine’s “12 Best Novels of 2018” “An urgent and beautifully written literary thriller about a man on the run that explores themes like the pain of atonement and the necessity of reconciliation, being published at a time when understanding across cultural and political divides seems wider than ever." —Salon.com   “In sly and subtle ways, House skillfully beckons readers to dig deep into their own hearts and minds.”   —Atlanta Journal-Constitution “House, evoking writers such as Rick Bass and Wendell Berry, serves up earnest, plainspoken characters nestled into lavishly drawn natural settings. He paints, too, an equally if less violently vivid portrait of Key West… He is that rare stylist on whose descriptions— incantations, really—one wishes to linger.”   — Garden & Gun   “A master storyteller, Silas House shows a keen understanding of the modern South wrestling with change.”   — Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Given all the stories we have of the South in print, this one is, in a quiet way, revolutionary.”   —Asheville Citizen-Times “ Southernmost engages my most deeply hidden fears and hopes. Silas House has all the gifts of a passionate storyteller, and to this book he adds the heartfelt convictions of a man willing to voice what we so seldom see in print—the ways in which with all good intentions we can mess up and go wrong, and only later try to sort out how we can win our own redemption. I love this book, and for it, I love Silas House.” — Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina   “This beautifully crafted novel brims with a spirit of hopeful humanity as one man’s effort to make himself a better person casts ripples in the world around him. “ — Charles Frazier, author of Varina " Southernmost offers no easy conclusions about forgiveness, religion or moral courage. Rather, this novel weighs the high costs of confronting the way our beliefs evolve in response to our lives, as well as the costs of denying that evolution. But House also succeeds in telling a satisfying story—one that resonates beyond the issues of the day, toward something deeper and larger.” —Knoxville News-Sentinel “Though it never turns a blind eye to the cruelties of which we’re capable,  Southernmost is nonetheless assured in its belief that we can learn from, grow with, and find sustenance in each other. I devoured it like a thriller, standing in a pool in New Orleans one weekend this summer, crying all the while.” —Paste “An evangelical preacher learns ‘judge not” is easier said than done . . . a reflection on the ways in which one man struggles to see beyond his own delusions. The strength is Southernmost lies in its exploration of the messiness of life.”   —The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) “Lyrical and though