A Wild Eden

When Jack Parker's father dies Jack knows one thing: Tom Parker was a good man. Beyond that, decades of distance and silence had kept the two men from truly knowing each other. Jack attends the funeral with the hope he can shovel some dirt onto Tom’s casket, collect a few commiserations, and put miles between himself and the questions he’d let simmer since he’d left home years before. But when a group of strangers appears at the funeral, Jack realizes he has more questions than answers about how his father actually lived his life.

Jack picks up the pieces, moving back home to help his ailing mother and continue work on his father’s many projects. He soon finds himself at the center of a family maelstrom, worsened by his troubled siblings’ lives and continued unearthings of Tom’s secrecy. Haunted by hazy nightmares from his youth and driven by guilt, Jack tries to uncover why his father kept such a considerable part of his life from them all. The secrets Jack uncovers might shake the foundation of the refuge he hopes to create.

Suddenly thrust into a dangerous world of drug deals and violence, Jack is forced to examine his own brutal limits and those of his father. When finally faced with the truth of his and Tom’s past, he realizes that sometimes secrets are best left buried on the river bottom.

A Wild Eden was the 2018 South Carolina Novel Prize winner, selected by Jill McCorkle.

Praise for A Wild Eden

"In A Wild Eden, Scott Sharpe reveals how a uniquely designed treehouse on a small Southern farm becomes a place of tragedy and rebirth for a family that recovers from shocking secrets and vicious violence through indomitable love." —Sandra Johnson, author of *Standing on Holy Ground: A Triumph over Hate Crime in the Deep South*

"A Wild Eden is the compelling story of a son’s journey to understand his father. Insightful and moving, Scott Sharpe introduces us to a whole family and the history that bonds them." —Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life

The South Carolina First Novel Prize is funded by the South Carolina Arts Commission, Hub City Press, the Phifer/Johnson Foundation of Spartanburg, SC, and the South Carolina State Library, which will purchase a book for each public library branch in the state. The Humanities CouncilSC is a founding partner.

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