Miller Cane – A True and Exact History
Professional liar Miller Cane is making a killing traveling the country running therapy groups for survivors of mass shootings—and business is booming. But just as his latest con is unfolding, he’s interrupted by a call from Lizzie, the woman he loves. It seems Lizzie’s in jail for shooting and wounding an abusive former lover, Connor, who wants custody of her eight-year-old daughter, Carleen. Lizzie is adamant: Miller must keep Carleen from Connor, taking the kid on the road with him in his battered old motor home.
Meanwhile, Miller’s former life as a teacher and scholar catches up with him when his New York editor persuades him to contribute to a forthcoming history book. Miller takes Carleen to historical sites in the American West—from the Whitman Massacre site to the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder—and begins his textbook entries. But dealing as he is with the stress of parenting Carleen while evading Connor and other threats, Miller’s textbook sidebars become more and more . . . creative.
As the two drive toward their inescapable destiny, Miller the liar struggles to say something true that he can bequeath to this child he’s grown to love.
Miller Cane: A True & Exact History is set in our tumultuous present, swimming in violence and fraud, but it’s also about how we care for each other, even save each other, with a narrative drive and sense of humor in the tradition of other American road novels, from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to The Sisters Brothers. Painfully true and painfully funny, Miller Cane will take its place alongside such books as True Grit and Paper Moon.
Safe in Heaven Dead
“A superbly convincing first novel …. An expertly motivated debut that moves briskly and doesn’t lose sight of its affecting purpose.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Everything was rolling along smoothly for Robert Elgin. He and his wife, Laura, had a loving marriage, and had taken enough “me” time before having kids; one girl, one boy. After doing the hippie, idealistic thing for awhile, he finally allowed his father in law to get him a job in labor negotiations where he could still fuel his power to the people energies by fighting on the common man’s behalf. When Robert becomes too good at his job and is recruited by the County Executive’s office to conspire in some dirty negotiations that would allow for a run at Governor, the perfect life begins to crumble. And to make matters much, much worse, Robert learns his five—year—old daughter has been molested by the local 12—year—old neighbor, and the crumbling becomes a full-scale slide. While his wife becomes obsessed with grief counselors, rape specialists, being saved by Jesus, and putting the twelve year old behind bars, Robert finds himself losing touch with his family and losing his grip on reality. When he learns of a secret, dirty fund the labor office has been skimming off the public, he takes the money and runs. And so begins Robert’s life as a dead man. Told from the end to the beginning, this Memento-style literary noir about one man’s undoing is a fresh new style of fiction. Safe in Heaven Dead is a stunning book by a new voice in contemporary literature.
Drift and Swerve
“Keening and cacophonous, raucous and ecstatic.”
– Brooklyn Rail
Winner of the 2008 Autumn House Fiction Prize selected by Sharon Dilworth, the 14 kinetic stories of Drift and Swerve swirl around characters in motion, hungry for connection or disconnection, struggling with violence and sexual emptiness, bad decisions and unintended consequences. A family flees a dying grandmother, pursing and nearly killing a drunk driver. A man abandoned by his wife becomes involved in a violent sexual relationship as he struggles to become a parent to his daughter. An adolescent girl runs to Providence, steals drug money to escape an empty relationship and runs to Austin, still searching for love, though she knows she has as much chance as anyone — none. These are stories of connection and fracture, struggle and survival, dignity and disgrace, stories of isolation and the sparks of intimacy that reanimate hope.
Wonderland
“Sam Ligon has mastered the art of capturing the sweet derangement of love. His characters are drunk with desire and reckless in all the right ways, and his prose is incandescent, absurd, wickedly funny and, in the end, achingly true.”
– Steve Almond
“I didn’t know how much there was to want in the world until I saw Sheena, and then I wanted it all.” These thirteen short-short stories by Samuel Ligon, illustrated by collage artist Stephen Knezovich, are as dark and absurd as they are poignant, playful, and true, examining men and women and love and loss and donkeys and goats and murder, carnivals, and whiskey bosoms. “Nobody deserves love. Or everyone does. It comes and it goes of its own free will. Like fever. Like flood. Like the greatest thing you’re ever gonna lose. And once it’s gone, it’s gone for good…”
Among the Dead and Dreaming
“Ligon handles this latticework with impressive fluidity and dramatic momentum, the disparate voices lacing the novel with the melancholy of aborted and fractured love.”
– The New York Times
Nikki has spent her life running from her abusive mother and the violent boyfriend she killed years ago, and now from his brother, Burke, just released from prison. Burke doesn’t know yet how his brother died, but he’s obsessed with finding Nikki and claiming her—and her daughter—as his own. Now she’s run out of room to run.
Pie & Whiskey
“This project began as a reading series organized by Lebo and Ligon, in which they sent 12 writers a pie and whiskey prompt to inspire new work. Six years later, they have created an anthology that’s just as eclectic, drunk and delicious.”
– The New York Times
Pie & Whiskey is the tent revival of literary events where writers present original works based on prompts that include the words “pie” or “whiskey” or both. This anthology collects the best of that writing along with new pieces to bring this spirited gathering to the printed page. Look here for…
• Robert Wrigley on Ten High, rotgut, Jack, and Jim Beam.
• Paisley Rekdal on WC Fields.
• Anthony Doerr on teen love and Heavenly Pie.
• Elissa Washuta on the whiskey swilling man-babies of Tinder.
• Jess Walter on how to spike Thanksgiving dinner.
• Kate Lebo on the American Gothic House and funeral pie.
• Samuel Ligon on cocktails with Pat Nixon and Sacajawea.
• Steve Almond on what happens in the kitchen when the kiddies go to bed.
• Shawn Vestal on Frito Pie.
• Kim Barnes on the pleasures of smoking, drinking, salt, and opera.
• Thom Caraway on hungover poets lost in the woods.
and more tasty literary servings.