Live Caught

Lenny's out of options. He's lost his arm to his abusive older brothers and he's lost his bearings within his family. But he's determined not to lose hope. He attempts an escape on a stolen skiff, hoping to ride the rivers from his family's farm deep in the western North Carolina mountains all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. A torrential storm sinks his boat and delivers him into the hands of a profanity-slinging priest whose illegal drug operation provides food and wages for the local parish. Snared within a power struggle between a crooked cop and the priest, Lenny once again relies on the thinnest shred of hope in his attempt to escape.

Live Caught is a survival adventure which dives deep into the mystifying relationship between hope and choice, and examines the peril of remaining in an untenable situation rather than taking that terrifying first step toward change. Lenny takes that step, and then another and another in his journey back toward his abusers and the unlikely prospect of family reconciliation.

R. Cathey Daniels’ debut novel, Live Caught from Black Lawrence Press, was published in April 2022. The novel won first prize in the 2018 Retreat West First Chapter Competition, and was a semi-finalist in the 2020 University of New Orleans Press Novel Contest. Her short story, "Boy In Waves," was a semi-finalist in the North Carolina Writers’ Network 2021 Doris Betts Fiction Prize and was subsequently published in storySouth. Her essay on Lynda Barry and Set Pieces appeared in The Marvelous Paragraph Project. She is a 2016 graduate of the Stanford University Novel Writing Program. Connect with Daniels @CatheyDaniels and visit her website, rcatheydanielsauthor.com.