It’s a tale as old as time: doomed romance, bloody revenge, fast food, and the voice of God. Welcome to Tyler Parker’s Oklahoma, and one of the most anticipated debut novels of the year from one of our best, funniest new writers.
Check out Sylvia Table: he drives a seafoam-green 1968 Ranchero, owns a badass sword, and is one dead uncle away from an inheritance that should set him and the love of his life, Lady Sixkiller, on the road to easy living and the family she’s always wanted. Sure, he may not be cut out for any kind of conventional job, but as long as Lady can hold things down as a waitress until rich old Methuselah shuffles off this mortal coil, what’s the big deal? Yes, things are looking good for Sylvia Table, aka Big Noise, aka Grandest Poobah, aka Big Quiche.
But uncles don’t always die on schedule, maternal clocks keep ticking with increasing urgency, doing crimes beats working for a living, and the past refuses to stay buried. In this case, the past takes the form of Priscilla Blackwood, a woman locked in an eternal one-sided conversation with Jesus Christ Himself, and dead set on enacting vengeance for the murder of her father, which she witnessed as a little girl. Whether Table knows it or not, he’s on a collision course with an avenging angel who believes she’s got the Lord on her side.
Combining the linguistic punch of Elmore Leonard, the living landscapes of Cormac McCarthy, and the comic soul of Charles Portis, A Little Blood and Dancing announces Tyler Parker as one of our most extraordinary new voices.
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With his explosive debut novel, Tyler Parker delivers the literary equivalent of smashing a beer sign with a pool cue. It’s a story that swirls with grit and glitter, God and pork butt, stale cigarettes and fresh wounds. Parker’s Oklahoma buzzes with tension, a fitting backdrop for his idiosyncratic personas and their bad, bad choices. But however gnarly, Parker has also graced his characters with a childlike tenderness. Meaning, you’ll be quickly smitten with these earnest weirdos as they love, lose, and grapple with the fallout from catastrophes of their own making. Their ambitions, their hurts, their bone-deep feelings all left me gasping as I turned the last few pages. Bonus: It’s also damn funny. There’s no doubt about it: A Little Blood and Dancing is a real humdinger, one that I burned through far too quickly.
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Ariel Dumas, Head Writer and Supervising Producer, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert