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.

Available now!

Behind the Waterline

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.

Blair Publisher
Praise for Behind the Waterline

Winner of the Lee Smith Novel Prize

Longlisted for the 2026 Aspen Words Literary Prize

Longlisted for the 2025 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

Inaugural Southern Summer Reading Club Pick, Southern Review of Books

Spring 2025 Reading Pick, Deep South Magazine

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