This is a first on all fronts! 2Leaf Press is publishing its first novel, The Morning Side of the Hill, by Ezra E. Fitz, his first novel!
In The Morning Side of the Hill, Fitz’ asks readers: What if you anted up and kicked in everything you had on a belief, a hope, a dream, on faith, and you lost? This is one of the questions facing Willie and Mo, the two insecure, incomplete protagonists that was inspired by – and is an homage to – William Faulkner’s classic novel The Wild Palms.
For those of you not in the “know,” in Faulkner’s book The Wild Palms — originally titled If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem —Faulkner interweaves two narratives, each wholly absorbing in its own right, each subtly illuminating the other. From these separate stories, Faulkner composes a symphony of deliverance and damnation, survival and self-sacrifice, a novel in which elemental danger is juxtaposed with fatal injuries of the spirit.
Like Faulkner’s novel, The Morning Side of the Hill unfolds in two parallel stories told in alternating chapters that subtly illuminate one another. A contemporary story set in New York City, in the first, set in uptown Manhattan, a disillusioned graduate student who’s just a little too familiar with the a neighborhood drug dealer and a lonely woman unappreciated by her detached, standoffish fiancé run off together in a headlong – or headstrong – pursuit of passion that appears doomed to a disastrous end. In the second, set in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a soft-spoken parolee looking to reassemble the broken pieces of his former life meets a young, withered yet surprisingly ebullient cancer patient with a love for poetry and music, and they find a deep sense of companionship in each other that eventually puts his one final chance at freedom at risk. These two separate stories are united by themes of deliverance and damnation, secrets and self-sacrifice, and the notion that the most dangerous injury of all is one that cuts deeply enough to would the human spirit. As you read on, the twin tales gather like a storm to an exhilarating ferocity, culminating in a violent flood of passions that none of the characters can control, and which threatens to drown them all.
Will anyone be able to keep their head above water? Faulkner fans familiar with The Wild Palms may think they know what the end holds for these four characters, but rest assured . . . the culmination of The Morning Side of the Hill exposes an unexpected coincidence that Faulkner may have hinted at but never fully explored. “Between grief and nothing I will take grief,” one of his original characters reluctantly submits. But could there be one other option?
With an experimental style and meticulous attention to diction and cadence, The Morning Side of the Hill is grandly inventive, heart-stopping in its prose, and suffused on every page with the physical presence of a community that Fitz has made his own. Check out the preview and pre-order the book!
THE MORNING SIDE OF THE HILL
With an introduction by Ernesto Quiñonez
Paperback $16.99 | 162 pp., 6” x 9”
ISBN: 978-1940939261 (pbk.)
Release Date: October 1, 2014
Available for pre-order at Amazon.com.
