In Virtual Conversation with John Lane and Thomas McConnell | Whose Woods These Are

Join us for a virtual event with John Lane celebrating the release of Whose Woods These Are, in conversation with Thomas McConnell, on Thursday, October 1st, at 7PM. John Lane is one of the founders of the Hub City Writers Project, and we are thrilled to host him for this event along with fellow Hub City Press author, Thomas McConnell!

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Whose Woods These Are

by John Lane

Whose Woods These Are takes place on Thanksgiving Day in a deep river bottom in a mythical Piedmont county, Morgan, South Carolina. The story is told in four perspectives on the possible death and certain disappearance of Old Doc, an 85-year-old land owner/deer hunter and centers on a contested property boundary shared with the resident Mitchell family who have lived on the land since colonial times.

Four intricately layered stories spool out as Thanksgiving Day progresses: that of Jae Mitchell, the young hunter with deep connections to the land; deputy sheriff Caddy Galligher, Jae's former girlfriend and mother of his young child; Daren Pagano, Old Doc's scheming real estate agent step son; and Sheriff Howard, near retirement, a hunting buddy of Old Doc who believes what his deputy Caddy tells him, that Jae Mitchell wouldn't kill anybody.

All have their stakes in what happened in the river bottom and the four stories turn into a search for the truth in the deep woods.

 

"With the ear and heart of the poet, the eye and mind of the storyteller, John Lane has done it again. He's marched a memorable cast of characters into a Morgan County mystery, a South Carolina Yoknapatawpha of his own making--and aren't we all lucky to have it?"--Thomas McConnell, author of The Wooden King

John Lane attended Wofford College, The Breadloaf School of English, and Bennington College. Among his many awards his selected poems, Abandoned Quarry, won the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Alliance Poetry Book Award, his nonfiction book Coyote Settles The South was named a finalist and a Nature Book of Uncommon Merit by the John Burroughs Society, and his novel Fate Moreland's Widow was named Independent Publisher Silver Medalist. One of the founders of the Hub City Writers Project, Lane lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Thomas McConnell is the author of The Wooden King, which won the 2019 IPPY Award - Gold Medal in War/Martime Fiction and was Shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. His work has appeared in the Connecticut Review, the Cortland Review and Shenandoah, among other publications. He has received the South Carolina Academy of Authors Fiction Fellowship, the Hackney National Literary Award for the Short Story, and his story collection A Picture Book of Hell and Other Landscapes was published by Texas Tech University Press. He teaches English at the University of South Carolina Upstate.