Welcome to the Fallen Paradise - Hardcover

Sherman, Dayne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1931561737 ISBN 13: 9781931561730

Publisher: Macadam Cage Pub, 2004

Synopsis

Believing that he has escaped the legacy of violence that has haunted his family in Baxter Parish, Louisiana, twenty-seven-year-old Jesse Tadlock returns home after a nine-year Army hitch to reclaim his life, only to be confronted by a dangerous neighbor who threatens everything he cares for. A first novel.

About this title

About the Author

Dayne Sherman is a college professor. He has worked a variety of jobs as a grocery store clerk, carpenter's helper, door-to-door rat poison distributor, watermelon salesman, itinerant Baptist preacher, English as a second language teacher in Russia, fitness instructor, and most recently as a reference librarian. At 18 years old, he took the GED and went to the university in his hometown. A member of Phi Kappa Phi, Sherman earned master’s degrees from LSU and Southeastern Louisiana University. Welcome to the Fallen Paradise was published by MacAdam/Cage in 2004. It was named a Best Debut of the Year by The Times-Picayune and a Notable Book by Book Sense. Recently, Welcome to the Fallen Paradise was the sole "Louisiana" pick for Booklist's "Hard-Boiled Gazetteer to Country Noir." His writing has appeared in many literary magazines, and one of his short stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Sherman lives in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, with his wife and son. His website is daynesherman.com. Zion is his second novel.

From Publishers Weekly

Sherman's promising debut chronicles a young man's thorny return to his Louisiana hometown. Baxter Parish is a "dead-end place, a place filled with death and violence, a territory sunk in the mire of unemployment and poverty." After serving 12 years in the army, 30-year-old Jesse Taddock returns to Baxter Parish to bid his dying mother farewell, and then decides to stay. He secures a job as deputy sheriff, reunites with an old high school flame and buys a house with his $30,000 inheritance. Life looks to be just fine until the giant Balem "Cotton" Moxley shows up at Jesse's doorstep with a shotgun, vowing to reclaim the land he insists rightfully belongs to him. Jesse, forced to choose between capitulation (the sheriff's strong advice) and a good hard fight, opts for the latter. With the assistance of his uncle Red, Jesse prepares to go head to head with Moxley, erecting blockades and fashioning an arsenal of bullets, bombs and blades. Sherman brilliantly reunites a land with its own set of vicious rules with a native of that land who, as a changed man, simply wants peace. Weaving his way through a series of complex characters and a terrain fertilized with a proud but bloody history, Sherman tells a spirited and engaging tale.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Macadam Cage Pub
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1931561737
• ISBN 13: 9781931561730
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248