The Holdout. This item is unavailable.The Holdout

THE HOLDOUT is a philosophical novel set in modern-day Mississippi treating religion, sexuality, academic life and academic freedom, sports and sports culture against the backdrop of the quotidian daily malaise (named 'torpor' in the work) afflicting all people.  The story is told through the first person viewpoint of Rhett Lawson, an ex-NFL player finishing up graduate school. Rhett is a sincere Catholic although obsessed with women and sex and finds himself often trapped in “the torpor.” His two main companions are his friends Brent (an atheist) and David (an Evangelical Protestant). The three have wide-ranging discussions on various topics throughout the narrative. Additionally, issues of race (Rhett is white, his aunt Shelby, a central figure to the story, is black), the nature of contemporary academia, and commentary on life in twenty-first century Mississippi (something largely unplumbed in comparison to the plethora of works that have tackled the Civil War South of the 1860s or the Civil Rights Era South of the 1960s) underpin the story. 

His fiction has appeared in Eclectica Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, PILGRIM, The Southern Distinctive, Five on the Fifth, and on The Short Humour Site; academic articles in Religious and Sacred Poetry, North Alabama Historical Review, The Polish Review and Idaho Magazine. A holder of a Ph.D. in history, currently teaching at a university in the Midwest (in the history dept). Fluent in Polish, conversational in Czech and French. A translation (Polish to English) for author Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm subsequently became Chapter One of her book The Polish Experience through World War II: A Better Day Has Not Come (Lanham, MD, 2013) Played baseball in college, professionally in Europe, and for the Polish National team.