Product details
- ISBN 9781588385802
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Apr 2026
- Publisher: University of Georgia Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
December 1, 1955: Flood gates are poised to slam shut on a concrete dam spanning the Oogasula River, creating a lake that will submerge a crossroads community and thousands of acres of woodlands in rural Georgia. The novel unfolds in one day’s action as viewed through the eyes of Elmer Blizzard, a troubled ex-deputy; Mrs. McNulty, a lonely widow who refuses to leave her doomed shack by the river; Percy, her loyal, aging dog; and a rapacious politician, State Senator Aubrey Terrell, for whom the new lake is named.
Originally published in 2011 to critical acclaim, Fall Line is a story of loss, bitterness, hypocrisy, violence, and revenge in the changing South and is populated by complex characters who want to do the right thing but don’t know how. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Best of the South” selection, Joe Samuel Starnes’s novel is a memorable, beautiful, and heartbreaking tale of a backwater hamlet’s damaged people and its transformed landscape.
JOE SAMUEL STARNES is the coauthor of Leth Oun’s memoir, A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service and three critically acclaimed novels, the most recent of which is Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and various magazines, and his essays, short stories, and poems in literary journals. He was awarded a fellowship for the 2006 Sewanee Writers Conference.
