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St. Peter’s Monsters is available at these fine booksellers and retail stores: Joseph Beth, Lexington, KY; Family Drug, Lebanon, VA; Coffee Buy the Book, Pulaski, VA; Wise County Historical Society, Wise, VA; Zazzy’Z, Abingdon, VA; Coffee Depot, Christiansburg, VA; Binding Time Cafe, Martinsville, VA; Kraftin’ Korner, Lebanon, VA; Appalachian Arts Center, Wardell, VA; and Tales of the Lonesome Pine Bookstore, Big Stone Gap, VA.
It is available on-line at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, Powell’s Books, and Target, as well as in some stores in the chains. It is available through nevabryan.com.
You may order a signed copy via snailmail. Send $14.00 (plus .70 tax if in VA) plus $3.99 for shipping and handling to: Brighid Editions, PO Box 1428, Saint Paul, VA 24283.
Books are always available during the author’s appearances. See her calendar for an event near you.
Publication Date: February 2009
Price: $14.00
Length: 294 pages
Cover Style: 6″X9″ Color Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-615-26391-5
LCCN: 2008910946
St. Peter’s Monsters is the story of Peter Sullivan, a homesick college student teetering on the edge of alcoholism. He discovers bigger monsters than the bottle when a mysterious young woman enters his life. Wren has fled Peter’s beloved Appalachian hills and now he must find out why she is keeping secrets about her past.
As they turn to each other for comfort, they are linked together in a chain of love, tragedy, and murder . . . a chain that binds them when they find themselves back in the haunted shadows of the Virginia coalfields.
“Blacksnake.” Jimson Weed, vol. XXIV, new series vol. 8, no. 2 (Fall 2005).
Blacksnake
Coiled in my path like an ampersand.
My heart beats an ellipsis . . .
Punctuates the sentence of my original sin.
Serpent conjunction links me to my base nature.
What was beautiful about you before you came between
Adam & Eve?
When author Alice Hoffman read Roberta Silman’s review of her novel The Story Sisters, the author was not pleased. The review wasn’t stellar but certainly it wasn’t crushing. Hoffman, however, chose to respond in less than gracious fashion.
She tweeted nasty comments about Silman and the Boston Globe, and published Silman’s e-mail and phone number. Apparently that last action was meant as a call to arms: Hoffman fans of the world, unite! Tell off this critic!
Having been a Hoffman fan for many years, I do not feel a sense of unity with any other fan who might have chosen to answer that call before the author withdrew the tweets and issued a tepid apologetic statement.
I’m more inclined to be less inclined to read any future Hoffman books. Had she played the proverbial wet duck, she would be a much more sympathetic figure. Instead, she comes off as a hothouse flower.
There’s a danger in using technology as reprisal. Sometimes it backfires. Anyone who’s ever made a drunken phone call to an ex in the middle of the night knows how it works. Technology used in the heat of the moment equals regret, regret, regret.
Mara mentioned villanelles at Spoken Word last weekend. Here's a form I like: the pantoum.
It is a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues until the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern.
AUTUMN SACRIFICE
Holy ghost mist
Walks on water
In morning’s sacred hour.
Autumn hovers above,
Walks on water
In reflections of the sky.
Autumn hovers above,
Mild, then meek, in wind.
In reflections of the sky
Leaves deny death.
Mild, then meek, in wind,
Branches scratch testaments.
Leaves deny death,
But frosty breath withers.
Branches scratch testaments.
Sun draws blood,
But frosty breath withers
Holy ghost mist.
Sun draws blood
In morning’s sacred hour.
“Autumn Sacrifice.” Poetry. 2006 Explorations, MECC, Third Place.
I'm excited to have my work appear in the book anthology We All Live Downstream alongside work by:
• Earl Hamner (creator of the Waltons)
• Ashley Judd
• Robert Kennedy Jr.
• Wendell Berry
• Bobbie Ann Mason
• Ann Pancake
• Jean Ritchie
• Silas House
• Hal Crowther
• Jeff Biggers
• Denise Giardina
• Pamela Duncan
• Many other fine writers and performers.
Excerpt from The Editorial Department's website regarding St. Peter's Monsters:
"Neva worked with TED Managing Editor Jesse Steele to make her book ready for publication, and while editing Jesse absolutely fell in love with Neva's evocative prose and powerful characters."
"Jesse was thrilled to be working on such a gorgeous novel and found herself thinking about Wren and Peter long after the work was done."
“It’s one of the best novels I’ve read that uses this area as the frame around the story. You captured the beauty of . . . Southwest Virginia in a love story filled with twists and turns, and an ending that, like a fine dessert, left the reader satisfied. Good work.” — M.A.
“The book was so well written! You are an excellent author and I hope you will continue to write and write and write some more. This was the first book I have read in a long time that kept my interest so well that I did not fall asleep after reading 4 paragraphs.” — C.R.
“It was wonderful! I couldn’t put it down. I was reading it every chance I got. The story left me with a great sense of hope. I missed reading it after I had finished.” — D.C.
“It was a delight to read this book. The characters are well-defined. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.” — P.B.
“I absolutely loved your book and I read at least four novels a week!” — G.F.
“It is awesome; it was hard to put down. You are a very gifted author. I love to read and I will be looking forward to your next novel.” — C.R.
“I am becoming so absorbed in your book. I’m loving it!” — A.P.
“I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and I did not want it to end. Keep up the good writing, and I can’t wait until your next book will be published. Keep writing!!” — P.L.
“The book was very good. It read well. The best phrase: ‘Home is not a place, it’s people . . . people who love you.’” — B.D.
“I enjoyed your book very much. I worked faster because I could hardly wait to get back to Peter and Wren.” — M.B.
“I loved the flow of your book. You jumped around in time so seamlessly. I also loved the way you used newspaper clippings to cover a broad period of time. Again, congratulations on a job well done!” — C.O.
“I let a few of my friends read my copy and they are all CRAZY about it!! They loved it and wanted their own copy and some even said they wanted to order one for family/friends.” — K.G.
Excerpt from “Sawmill Boys.” Appalachian Heritage, vol. 34, no. 4 (Fall 2006).
For more information about Appalachian Heritage, Berea College's literary journal, and to order back issues, visit http://community.berea.edu/appalachianhe
by Neva Bryan
"Where there’s loggers, there’s bound to be sawmill boys.”
Sawmill boys. I liken them to trees because they possess two kinds of beauty. The first kind is in their natural freedom, the beauty of a tree standing tall with its brothers. But when the sawmill gets a hold on them, they develop a second kind of beauty, the kind that comes from being cut down, sawed up, and spit out. Rough cut, splintered, shaped for utility.
A sawmill boy can take a 4X4 between the eyes that’ll lay him out flat on his ass and then get back up to finish his workday. They all wear a strange cologne of diesel fuel, hydraulic fluid, and cigarette smoke. Sawdust trails them like breadcrumbs for the lost. They’re lean, with knotty arms and hard faces, but their eyes are dreamy.
Wendell, my ex-husband, was a sawmill boy. I remember the first time I saw him, more than five years ago. He was coming out of the ABC store with a bottle of Jack Daniels tucked under his arm. He had that sawmill boy look – lean and hard – but he was dressed to party: Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt, faded jeans, black and silver biker boots.
His fair skin was ruddy from working outside all day. When I got close I saw that his knuckles were skinned, scabbed, and scarred . . . a perpetual state for sawmill boys, I learned later. At least he had all his fingers.
When he cocked his head at me and grinned, I saw a slight gap between his two front teeth. As he smiled, his eyes darkened from coffee-and-cream to pure black liquid. His hair was the color of my Granny’s apple butter; I thought how sweet it would be to free it from its tight ponytail and watch it tumble down around me. Just looking at him made me hungry.
Before I knew it, Wendell and I sat on the bank of the Clinch River sharing Jack and naming stars. By turns he was raunchy and sweet, sad and funny, goofy and sexy. I gave up to him with an immediacy – an urgency – that was quite foreign to me. It seems I had taken a 4X4 right between the eyes. Wendell Kennedy was a splinter who had worked his way straight into my heart.