The latest book from visiting author Madeline ffitch!

From the acclaimed author of Stay and Fight comes an uproarious, unabashed novel of an Appalachian town, the diverse locals who make it home, an influx of white nationalists trying to take over, and the ways in which the battle brings out our light.

Ditched on the side of the road, two friends shelter for the night in a barn. When they wake, one comes face-to-face with his destiny―an antique letterpress, the Vandercook No. 4.

Woody and Leroi have been friends their whole lives. But as Leroi falls in with the collective that cooks every Sunday in the park, learning about traveler symbols and how to slice a cucumber, Woody starts to snort the pills he’s been selling. He makes his art: beautiful letterpress signs for protests, and business cards commissioned by a woman he knows as Stasia but whom others know to be the leader of a white nationalist movement. Stasia bought the barn with the Vandercook in it; she says Woody can use it anytime. What does she want in return?

Woody and Leroi are just two residents of this Appalachian town. Their lives intersect, often at the library, with a cast of delightfully eccentric individuals. Eloise, the town librarian and lifelong activist. The punks at Food Not Bombs. Sharon, a wry social worker. Emma, a mom trying really hard not to take out her anger on her kids. Amber, the health goddess who runs the Discipline Cafe. Sylvester, an unhoused man with a long history in town. Matt Mistelthwaite, a World War II veteran with his own connections to the Vandercook. When Stasia insists on hosting a European Heritage Rug Braiding workshop at the library, everyone’s lives will be upended.

In Avalon, Rise, an ensemble novel genuinely rooted in the collective, Madeline ffitch asks big questions and doesn’t look away from the answers.

Hardcover.

Read just a few paragraphs and you’ll see: not much preamble is required for Madeline ffitch’s debut collection. The short stories within speak for themselves, loudly, clearly. Here you’ll find a passionate scientist studying a forgotten species of Mud Turtle, a janitor who brings up his daughter in the basement of her middle school, a construction worker who minds where he pees, and a whole lot more. Throughout, you’ll be astonished and engaged by their colloquial fluency, honest characters, and intriguing rural backdrops.

Paperback.

Read more from visiting author Madeline ffitch!

"Like Bastard Out of Carolina, ffitch's electrifying debut novel is a paean to independence and a protest against the materialism of our age." ―O: The Oprah Magazine

"Delightfully raucous." ―Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

Helen arrives in Appalachian Ohio full of love and her boyfriend’s ideas for living off the land. Too soon, with winter coming, he calls it quits. Helped by Rudy―her government-questioning, wisdom-spouting, seasonal-affective-disordered boss―and a neighbor couple, Helen makes it to spring. Those neighbors, Karen and Lily, are awaiting the arrival of their first child, a boy, which means their time at the Women’s Land Trust must end.

So Helen invites the new family to throw in with her―they’ll split the work and the food, build a house, and make a life that sustains them, if barely, for years. Then young Perley decides he wants to go to school. And Rudy sets up a fruit-tree nursery on the pipeline easement edging their land. The outside world is brought clamoring into their makeshift family.

Set in a region known for its independent spirit, Stay and Fight shakes up what it means to be a family, to live well, to make peace with nature and make deals with the system. It is a protest novel that challenges our notions of effective action. It is a family novel that refuses to limit the term. And it is a marvel of storytelling that both breaks with tradition and celebrates it. Best of all, it is full of flawed, cantankerous, flesh-and-blood characters who remind us that conflict isn't the end of love, but the real beginning.

Absorbingly spun, perfectly voiced, and disruptively political, Madeline ffitch's Stay and Fight forces us to reimagine an Appalachia―and an America―we think we know. And it takes us, laughing and fighting, into a new understanding of what it means to love and to be free.

Paperback.

All three of Madeline ffitch’s books, for when you wish the last one would have kept going…