Salvage This World

In Michael Farris Smith’s latest gritty epic, a young woman returns home with her child, to her haunted father, while a religious extremist hunts the storm-ridden territory to find the girl who may hold the key to the region’s apocalyptic future.

There was no rising from the dead and there was no hand to calm the storms and there was no peace in no valley.

In the hurricane-ravaged bottomlands of South Mississippi, where stores are closing and jobs are few, a fierce zealot has gained a foothold, capitalising on the vulnerability of a dwindling population and a burning need for hope.

As she preaches and promises salvation from the light of the pulpit, in the shadows she sows the seeds of violence.

Elsewhere, Jessie and her toddler, Jace, are on the run across the Mississippi/Louisiana line, in a resentful return to her childhood home and her desolate father.

Holt, Jace’s father, is missing and hunted by a brutish crowd, and an old man witnesses the wrong thing in the depths of night.

In only a matter of days, all of their lives will collide, and be altered, in the maelstrom of the changing world.

‘Michael Farris Smith masterfully takes us on a ride into the growing darkness of a crumbling world. You couldn’t ask for better than that.’ — Michael Connelly

• In Michael Farris Smith’s latest gritty epic, a young woman returns home with her child, to her ghost-haunted father, while a religious extremist hunts the storm-ridden territory to find the girl who may hold the key to the region’s apocalyptic future
• Perfect for readers of Southern Gothic noir, crime thrillers and ecological dystopia. Smith’s writing has been compared to Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx
• Smith’s earlier novel Blackwood was selected as a Times Book of the Year. His most recent novel, NICK, garnered blanket coverage across the national press, including reviews in the Times, Sunday Times, Financial Times, Mail, Mail on Sunday, Scotsman, Herald And Irish Times
• Desperation Road, The Fighter and Blackwood have all been optioned for film, with Smith acting as screenwriter. Rumble Through the Dark (aka The Fighter), starring Aaron Eckhart And Bella Thorne, is set for release by Universal International in spring 2023, and Desperation Road, starring Mel Gibson And Garrett Hedlund, is currently in production
• For fans of Lou Berney, SA Cosby, Chris Offutt, Donald Ray Pollock, Joe Lansdale, Wiley Cash, Daniel Woodrell And James Lee Burke
• Smith has been longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and awarded the Mississippi Author Award for Fiction, Transatlantic Review Award, and Brick Streets Press Story Award