Amidst This Fading Light

2018 | Fiction & Poetry

Dominated by a few old, founding families, Germantown was mired in tradition and hearsay. All that changed once the Picketts arrived. No one knew what to make of them at first, and no one could have predicted the unbelievable tragedy this family would bring to the small town. Set against the backdrop of the rural North Carolinian piedmont during the Great Depression, AMIDST THIS FADING LIGHT explores life, death, and what it means to carry on as we deal with what fate forces upon us, both the light and the dark, to persevere and survive or to be swept away by time and inescapable memory. “The tragedy at the center of this novel is deftly handled: How are we to survive the worst that life puts in our paths? Rebecca Davis knows the place she writes about, from the groundwater to the angle of the overhead sun, and, lucky for us readers, she knows its people—and people everywhere—just as well. This is such a generous and carefully told book that it’s difficult to believe it’s the author’s first —Michael Parker, author of THE WATERY PART OF THE WORLD and EVERYTHING, THEN AND SINCE “Rebecca Davis writes with a journalist’s detail, a historian’s wisdom, and a photographer’s understanding of shadows. Above all, she is a natural storyteller, evident on every page of her graceful debut. AMIDST THIS FADING LIGHT answers the question few mysteries ever ask: Who do we become in the wake of tragedy?” —James Tate Hill, author of ACADEMY GOTHIC “This remarkable novel in stories is built around a devastating act of violence, but Davis’s empathy for her richly realized characters, her delicately realized prose, and her insights into human nature are the real draws. AMIDST THIS FADING LIGHTt is an exciting debut, and Davis is a young writer to watch —Holly Goddard Jones, author of The Salt Line

Rebecca Davis (Author)