When I set out to write a story, I am not trying to prove a point nor sell an idea. I am simply trying to capture the essence of the human condition, the universality of both failure and triumph.

BCALA Honor Book                   WLT Discovery Prize                   Lee Smith Novel Prize

Behind the Waterline tells the story of a teenager, Eric, and his eccentric grandmother, who decide to ride out Hurricane Katrina together in his second-floor bedroom. Eric—in a dream, a hallucination, or something else—discovers a room beyond his closet wall, a place he has never seen, where, ultimately, he discovers the history of his people—those he sorely misses and those he never knew.