“An absorbing novel from a writer at
the height of his powers.”
—MARGOT LIVESEY, author of The Road from Belhaven
About Lee
Lee Martin is the Pulitzer Prize Finalist author of The Bright Forever. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper’s, Ms., The Best American Essays, The Best American Mystery Stories, Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, among others. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. A native Midwesterner, he teaches in the MFA program at The Ohio State University.
About The Evening Shades
The highly anticipated follow-up to Pulitzer Prize finalist The Bright Forever, The Evening Shades tells the story of two lonely people in a small Midwestern town and the dark secrets tormenting them.
One afternoon in the autumn of 1972, a lonely widow in Mt. Gilead, Illinois, makes the impromptu decision to rent out a room in her house to a stranger who has come to town. It is risky—she doesn’t know anything about him. But Edith Green can no longer bear a life lived alone. And Henry Dees is haunted by the past he carries with him from another small town, particularly by the death of a little girl that some people think was his fault. And slowly, Henry and Edith’s suspenseful dance between secrets and trust leads them to start revealing things to each other — and themselves.
Also by Lee
Praise for Lee
“Martin has written a not-to-be-missed masterwork..."
—BOOKLIST Starred Review, on The Mutual UFO Network
“Lee Martin has long been one of my favorite writers of fiction and memoir, and now he's one of my favorite writers of advice about the writer's craft. Everyone who writes, or wants to, should read this wise and inspiring book."
—DAVID JAUSS, author of On Writing Fiction, on Telling Stories
“. . .Mr. Martin is a top-notch craftsman. . ."
—THE NEW YORK TIMES, on Break the Skin
“Written in the clearest prose, working back and forth over its complex story, and told in the dark, desperate, vivid voices of its various speakers, [The Bright Forever] holds you spellbound to the end, to its final, sad revelations."
—KENT HARUF, author of Eventide and Plainsong, on The Bright Forever
Latest Blog Post
Cathy and I were having breakfast this morning at one of our favorite local restaurants when a little boy’s head popped up above the partition separating our table from a booth on the other side. He was, as we would soon learn, “not three,” which we understood to mean he was two. He and Cathy…