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A Southern-noir saga . . . [with Starnes an] expert in local color doing right by his all-but-vanished region.-- ""Publishers Weekly"" Starnes has produced a novel worthy of attention, providing real insight into how the power of money and government contributed to the loss of the agrarian South ... Starnes knows his home area and its people and how to write about them with admirable authority and poetic understanding.--Jean Cash ""Studies in American Culture"" The story of people losing their land for power generation will resonate. Well worth the read.-- ""GwinnettForum.com"" Fall Line is full of small moments of beauty and anguish.--Mark Kelly ""Weld for Birmingham"" A quiet dazzler of a new novel. Of all the contemporary Southern novels today that draw comparisons to Faulkner and O'Connor, Starnes's tale may be one of the few that deserves them. The unsentimental but glorious world seen through the eyes of a ""half mutt half chow"" fearful of man and guns is pure Faulkner. Elmer, condemning the bigwigs around him for ""their fondness for impure women and liquor and money and the love of their own images reflected in shiny glass"" echoes the righteous, scathing hatred of Hazel Motes (Wise Blood).--Gina Webb ""Atlanta Journal-Constitution"" At times, Fall Line is reminiscent of James Dickey's Deliverance, while at others it reminds you of Harry Crews's brilliant novel A Feast of Snakes. But Starnes applies his own eye to the Southern detail. The cast of characters is rich with color both in word and deed. Readers will see the dam construction from the view of a mutt-Chow dog, a disgruntled white male native of the farmland to be flooded and a black widow losing her only possession--home. The prose reads smooth and clean but still serves up layers of texture in scene and style.-- ""Chattanooga Times Free Press"" Starnes's evocatively Southern story may well have readers wanting to check their shoes for red mud or find an old hound to pat. Fall Line's message transcends region, however, leaving us at once troubled by man's sins against nature and himself, yet knowing somehow that both will endure.--James C. Cobb ""author of The South and America Since World War II"" The world Starnes creates in Fall Line is as evocative as it is conflicted. A story of land grabs, wounded families, loss, bitterness, hypocrisy, violence, and revenge in the changing South, the book reveals Starnes's uncompromising vision.--Julie MacDonnell Chang ""Philadelphia Stories"" With Fall Line, Joe Samuel Starnes has written a novel that accrues force the way a swollen river becomes a torrent. ... In a tightly controlled, elegant narrative, Starnes's exacting novel brings us inside one rural community when the American South was about to burst and not one thing could hold back water or time.--Jessica Handler ""TriQuarterly Online""

The story of people losing their land for power generation will resonate. Well worth the read. * GwinnettForum.com * The world Starnes creates in Fall Line is as evocative as it is conflicted. A story of land grabs, wounded families, loss, bitterness, hypocrisy, violence, and revenge in the changing South, the book reveals Starnes's uncompromising vision. -- Julie MacDonnell Chang * Philadelphia Stories * At times, Fall Line is reminiscent of James Dickey's Deliverance, while at others it reminds you of Harry Crews's brilliant novel A Feast of Snakes. But Starnes applies his own eye to the Southern detail. The cast of characters is rich with color both in word and deed. . . . The prose reads smooth and clean but still serves up layers of texture in scene and style. * Chattanooga Times Free Press * Starnes has produced a novel worthy of attention, providing real insight into how the power of money and government contributed to the loss of the agrarian South … Starnes knows his home area and its people and how to write about them with admirable authority and poetic understanding. -- Jean Cash * Studies in American Culture * A quiet dazzler of a new novel. Of all the contemporary Southern novels today that draw comparisons to Faulkner and O’Connor, Starnes’s tale may be one of the few that deserves them. The unsentimental but glorious world seen through the eyes of a “half mutt half chow” fearful of man and guns is pure Faulkner. Elmer, condemning the bigwigs around him for “their fondness for impure women and liquor and money and the love of their own images reflected in shiny glass” echoes the righteous, scathing hatred of Hazel Motes (Wise Blood). -- Gina Webb * Atlanta Journal-Constitution * Starnes’s evocatively Southern story may well have readers wanting to check their shoes for red mud or find an old hound to pat. Fall Line’s message transcends region, however, leaving us at once troubled by man’s sins against nature and himself, yet knowing somehow that both will endure. -- James C. Cobb * author of The South and America Since World War II * Fall Line is full of small moments of beauty and anguish. -- Mark Kelly * Weld for Birmingham * With Fall Line, Joe Samuel Starnes has written a novel that accrues force the way a swollen river becomes a torrent. … In a tightly controlled, elegant narrative, Starnes’s exacting novel brings us inside one rural community when the American South was about to burst and not one thing could hold back water or time. -- Jessica Handler * TriQuarterly Online * A Southern-noir saga . . . [with Starnes an] expert in local color doing right by his all-but-vanished region. * Publishers Weekly *

The story of people losing their land for power generation will resonate. Well worth the read. * GwinnettForum.com * The world Starnes creates in Fall Line is as evocative as it is conflicted. A story of land grabs, wounded families, loss, bitterness, hypocrisy, violence, and revenge in the changing South, the book reveals Starnes's uncompromising vision. -- Julie MacDonnell Chang * Philadelphia Stories * At times, Fall Line is reminiscent of James Dickey's Deliverance, while at others it reminds you of Harry Crews's brilliant novel A Feast of Snakes. But Starnes applies his own eye to the Southern detail. The cast of characters is rich with color both in word and deed. Readers will see the dam construction from the view of a mutt-Chow dog, a disgruntled white male native of the farmland to be flooded and a black widow losing her only possession—home. The prose reads smooth and clean but still serves up layers of texture in scene and style. * Chattanooga Times Free Press * Starnes has produced a novel worthy of attention, providing real insight into how the power of money and government contributed to the loss of the agrarian South … Starnes knows his home area and its people and how to write about them with admirable authority and poetic understanding. -- Jean Cash * Studies in American Culture * A quiet dazzler of a new novel. Of all the contemporary Southern novels today that draw comparisons to Faulkner and O’Connor, Starnes’s tale may be one of the few that deserves them. The unsentimental but glorious world seen through the eyes of a “half mutt half chow” fearful of man and guns is pure Faulkner. Elmer, condemning the bigwigs around him for “their fondness for impure women and liquor and money and the love of their own images reflected in shiny glass” echoes the righteous, scathing hatred of Hazel Motes (Wise Blood). -- Gina Webb * Atlanta Journal-Constitution * Starnes’s evocatively Southern story may well have readers wanting to check their shoes for red mud or find an old hound to pat. Fall Line’s message transcends region, however, leaving us at once troubled by man’s sins against nature and himself, yet knowing somehow that both will endure. -- James C. Cobb * author of The South and America Since World War II * Fall Line is full of small moments of beauty and anguish. -- Mark Kelly * Weld for Birmingham * With Fall Line, Joe Samuel Starnes has written a novel that accrues force the way a swollen river becomes a torrent. … In a tightly controlled, elegant narrative, Starnes’s exacting novel brings us inside one rural community when the American South was about to burst and not one thing could hold back water or time. -- Jessica Handler * TriQuarterly Online * A Southern-noir saga . . . [with Starnes an] expert in local color doing right by his all-but-vanished region. * Publishers Weekly * If you liked Deliverance by James Dickey, you'll like Fall Line by Joe Samuel Starnes. The Oogasula is about to be dammed by the Georgia Power Company and to hell with the folks whose houses and graves are going to be flooded. Some people take the money—one of them takes the law into his own hands. This novel is vividly alive with people (and a great dog) and the river. -- John Casey * author of Compass Rose and National Book Award-winner Spartina * Nothing says Southern like a bunch of corrupt good ol’ boys sitting around a table gambling away the lives of poor people. Starnes rips the lid off dirty Georgia politics, skewers the haves and honors the have-nothings who pushed back when a manmade lake came along to drown their communities for electricity and big profits. -- Teresa Weaver * Atlanta Journal-Constitution * In Starnes’s account, echoes of the Old South reverberate in the New. He imbues Fall Line with a lyrical authenticity and nuance that captures a truth of place in time. -- Rod Davis * Plaza de Armas * Fall Line is both a beautiful lament for the old agrarian South and an allegory for its transformation. The kind of South we find in Fall Line is gritty, rudderless, and wild, and through the point of view of a dog named Percy, Starnes zooms in on the brutality of the natural landscape. -- Kevin Catalano * Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers *

Author Information

JOE SAMUEL STARNES is the coauthor of Leth Oun’s memoir, A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service and three critically acclaimed novels, the most recent of which is Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and various magazines, and his essays, short stories, and poems in literary journals. He was awarded a fellowship for the 2006 Sewanee Writers Conference.

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