Zion (Paperback)

Zion: A Novel by Dayne Sherman Includes Reader's Edition for Book Groups and Author Q & A From the critically-acclaimed author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise comes a gothic treatment of the American South: a hard-charging depiction of religion, family, friendship, deception, and evil. Zion is a mystery set in the rural South, the story of a war fought over the killing of hardwoods in Baxter Parish, Louisiana. The tale begins in 1964 and ends a decade later, but the Hardin family, faithful members of Little Zion Methodist Church, will carry the scars for life. Praise for Dayne Sherman and his fiction: David Armand, author of Harlow, says: "Dayne Sherman's new novel is a taut literary thriller told in the vein of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and Larry Brown's Joe. Like all enduring literature, this book deals with the big issues: the Old Testament themes of justice, morality, revenge, fatherhood, and ultimately of how one finds hope and salvation in a fallen world. Zion is a book you will not want to put down, and it will make the ten years you've waited since Sherman's first novel seem worth every second." In Zion, his second novel, Dayne Sherman has proven he is one of the best writers of Southern fiction today. From his knowledge of guns to carpentry to nature Sherman misses nothing in the world of Baxter, Louisiana, a town filled with a cast of characters I'll long remember. It's good versus evil in an intense and riveting story where long withheld secrets tear at the very fabric of family ties. This is the story of Tom Hardin, a man with a conflicted heart whose lamentations strike the deepest veins of the heart. It's one of those rare tales that readers will continue to ponder long after the last page is turned. --Bev Marshall, author of Hot Fudge Sundae Blues & Right as Rain "In Zion we watch a small community and a family struggle to adapt to the dramatic social transformation of the 60s and 70s as the tentacles of change inched deeper into the countryside. Dayne Sherman tugs on our emotions as we are forced to choose sides...anger, disappointment, rage, joy, laughter...it's all there. Sherman channels Erskine Caldwell as we see flaws in good rural Southern folks and a glimmer of hope for redemption in the evil ones. This is a compelling story of coming of age in a small town, of the consequences of greed and selfishness, of the natural struggles between father and son and between husband and wife, and of the terror and consequences of getting caught for the evil deeds that seemingly ordinary people sometimes hide from their families." -Philip Shirley, author of The White Lie & Oh Don't You Cry For Me, a finalist for the Jefferson Prize "Dayne Sherman writes like I wish I could if I was still young enough to change." --Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin' & Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story "Dayne Sherman's exciting fiction takes us down a dusty Southern road to a place where both honor and ties of blood are more important than breath itself, and where even the religion is violent." --Tim Gautreaux, author of The Missing & The Clearing "Sherman's promising debut chronicles a young man's thorny return to his Louisiana hometown... Sherman brilliantly reunites a land with its own set of vicious rules with a native of that land who, as a changed man, simply wants peace. Weaving his way through a series of complex characters and a terrain fertilized with a proud but bloody history, Sherman tells a spirited and engaging tale." ---Publishers Weekly