Fielding Bliss has never forgotten the long, crazy summer of 1984 when a heat wave scorched Breathed, Ohio. It was the year he became friends with the devil.
Sal seems to appear out of nowhere—a bruised and tattered thirteen-year-old boy claiming to be the devil himself answering an invitation. Fielding Bliss, the son of a local prosecutor, brings him home, where he’s welcomed into the Bliss family, assuming he’s a runaway from a nearby farm town.
When word spreads that the devil has come to Breathed, not everyone is happy to welcome this self-proclaimed fallen angel. Murmurs follow him and tensions rise along with the temperatures, as an unbearable heat wave rolls into town right along with him. As strange accidents start to occur, riled by the feverish heat, some in the town start to believe that Sal is exactly who he claims to be. While the Bliss family wrestles with their own personal demons, a fanatic drives the town to the brink of a catastrophe that will change this sleepy Ohio backwater forever.
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“Reads as if Carson McCullers and Shirley Jackson got together with Nathaniel Hawthorne…to write the first truly great gothic coming-of-age novel of the twenty-first century.”
— Donald Ray Pollock, PEN/Robert Bingham Award–winning author
“A wonderfully original, profoundly unsettling, deeply moving novel that delivers both the shock of a fully realized reality and the deep resonance of parable. ”
— Robert Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author“In this bold and surprising debut novel…nothing is quite what it seems, as mystery and revelation alternate, right up to the end.”
— Robert Morgan, New York Times bestselling author“Part Flannery O’Connor, part Stephen King, and wholly original.”
— Lou Berney, author of Edgar Award–winning The Long and Faraway Gone“A haunting Appalachian Gothic novel that calls into question the nature of good and evil.”
— Akron Beacon Journal“As families and fanatics fight their personal demons, the line between good and evil becomes increasingly murky…This debut novel shines with beauty and lyricism.”
— Library Journal“An ambitious novel that will invite thought and surely spark discussion.”
— Booklist“A fantastic Jackson-esque debut about rumors, fears, and beliefs.”
— BookRiot“This book contains so much wisdom and is written so beautifully…[with] vibrant charm and deep grasp of Americana.”
— BookPeople“Delves into a small town and everyone’s secrets…Literary gold…often strange but beautiful.”
— Book Stalker BlogBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Tiffany McDaniel is an Ohio native whose writing is inspired by the rolling hills and buckeye woods of the land she knows. Also a poet and artist, she is the winner of the London Guardian’s 2016 “Not-the-Booker Prize” for her debut novel, The Summer that Melted Everything. The novel was a Goodreads Choice Award double nominee in both fiction and debut categories, a nominee for the Lillian Smith Book Award, and a finalist for the Ohioana Literary Award and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star Award for Outstanding Debut.
Mark Bramhall has won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration, more than thirty AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has repeatedly been named by AudioFile magazine and Publishers Weekly among their “Best Voices of the Year.” He is also an award-winning actor whose acting credits include off-Broadway, regional, and many Los Angeles venues as well as television, animation, and feature films. He has taught and directed at the American Academy of Dramatic Art.