W R I T I N G

Darkansas

Jarret Middleton

Fiction

Hardcover, Paperback

Dzanc Books

Jordan is a country musician living in the shadow of his father, bluegrass legend Walker Bayne. A man who has made a lifetime of poor decisions, Jordan bounces between dive bars, accruing women and drinking himself to the brink of disaster. When he returns home to the Ozarks for his twin brother’s wedding, Jordan uncovers a curse that has haunted his family for generations. As old tensions resurface and Jordan searches for a way to escape his family’s legacy, a mysterious hill dweller and his grotesque partner stalk the brothers’ every move, determined to see the curse through to its end. Praised by Donald Ray Pollock as “one of the best debuts of the year,” Middleton establishes himself as a novelist in good company with Brian Panowich and Smith Henderson, yet in a category all his own.

Jarret Middleton is the author of Darkansas and the novella, An Dantomine Eerly. He was the founding editor of Dark Coast Press and the classics library Pharos Editions, an imprint of Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press. His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in print and online.

Praise for Darkansas

“Reminiscent of the hillbilly noir of Daniel Woodrell, Middleton kicks up the violent secrets of generations of Baynes and their genetic legacy of twins and patricide [. . .] A vivid novel of an Ozark family bearing generations of twin sons with a legacy of violence that casts understanding light on their fatalistic darkness.” –Shelf Awareness

“A well-carved story of a family’s curse, as brittle and grotesque as any works in the vein of Faulkner or O’Connor [. . .] A subversive twist on Southern myth that’s surprisingly rich in its execution.” –Kirkus

“From the get-go, Middleton grabs readers with an eerie dream about a violent death, a portent of things to come in his page-turning debut about a family’s curse.” –Publishers Weekly

“Urgently written . . . Middleton’s atmospheric work, set in a world little visited, captures both individual and family struggle in sharp-edged language as it investigates how we constantly come up against fate.” –Library Journal

“Set in the hills and hollers of the Ozarks, this atmospheric debut is steeped in southern accents, bar brawls, and country music. When twin brothers Jordan and Malcolm Bayne return to the family home for a wedding, they unearth tales of violence and heartache that have plagued their family for generations. A gritty, gripping tale with great characters.” –Emily Adams, Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, WA (Staff Pick)

“The devil didn’t go down to Georgia, he went to Arkansas, where the Bayne family struggle against Beelzebub’s grip on their collective fates. Middleton’s ferocious debut has it all–sex, song, sadness, and a history as dark and twisted as the Ozark hollers that fill these pages. Holy hell, what a book.” –Peter Geye, author of Wintering

“Gritty, ghostly, poetic, Darkansas is sure to appeal to fans of William Gay and Shirley Jackson. I’d bet a fifth of the top-shelf stuff it will be considered one of the best debuts of the year.” –Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Heavenly Table

“A mesmerizing debut [. . .] There is a dark magic in Middleton’s prose that is impossible to resist.” –Jonathan Evison, New York Times best-selling author of The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

“Middleton’s lush writing creates an atmosphere both beautiful and horrific. A grand debut that pushes the limits of ‘Southern Gothic’ and delivers an engrossing story of family, love, and fate.” –Kathi Kirby, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR

“Middleton’s brilliant debut is a vivid, haunting page-turner in the American gothic tradition.” –Garth Stein, New York Times best-selling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

“A slow burn [. . .] Before you know it you can’t put it down. A barbed meditation on fear, family, and the monstrousness of fate.” –Brian Evenson, author of Last Days

“Reminiscent of the works of Larry Brown and Rick Bass; richly drawn, refreshing, and authentic [. . .] An innovative literary voice that I look forward to following for decades to come.” –Nickolas Butler, author of The Hearts of Men

“Darkansas croons a bloody and beautiful ballad . . . like Tom Waits scribbled it on cocktail napkins.” –Joshua Mohr, author of Sirens and Fight Song

“A delicious blend of the gritty reality inherent in dysfunctional family relationships and the magical realism of small towns in the mythic ‘deep south’ [. . .] You can practically hear Ry Cooder’s guitar licks playing in the background.”–Paul Hanson, Village Books, Bellingham, WA

“A novel that shares DNA not only with the best contemporary country noir authors but also with literary giants like Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner.”  –Gabino Iglesias, Criminal Element

“A dark, twisting page-turner with hints of Southern gothic lurking around the corners of its horror-tinged sense of dread and juxtaposes its gritty reality against a mounting sense of surrealistic terror.” –Keith Rice, Unbound Worlds

“A seemingly straightforward tale of a family curse takes several wide turns and ends up being something so far afield, it’s kind of astonishing. Using deliciously unreliable narrators, deeply conflicted characters, and an entrenched emotionality, Middleton writes a book that will leave you feeling absolute wonder at his creativity, and a longing for more.”   –Dianah Hughley, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR (Staff Pick)

“Middleton could accurately be credited with blending horror, literary fiction, Southern fiction, and science fiction/fantasy. His creepy, crawly sentences are laden with gothic thicket, and the atmosphere he evokes is mystical. What seems superficially realistic is shaded with a glow of “Mulholland Drive”-style surrealism. In a memorable and skilled novel, Middleton suggests that there are unexplained mysteries out there, and that their presence may play a heavier hand in our daily lives than we’d like to believe.” –Arkansas Times

In Middleton’s experimental first novella, a dying poet confronts repressed memories of pain and loss while on his deathbed. Dallin’s tortured psyche travels back to an old wind-beaten house where a palpable absence suggests a past but somehow still-looming tragedy; vacancy permeates a ghostly barroom and the campus of a condemned university; city streets and desolated forests are populated by no one except the changing formulations of Dallin’s own mind. Along with his wife Aìsling, the two flee an obscure political persecution which leads to her graphic, methodically planned murder. The impact of her death afflicts Dallin in ways he cannot comprehend, spiraling him headlong into his meeting with the mythic celestial escort, An Dantomine Eerly. This original debut is a skillful re-conception of the old Irish poetic form the aìsling, meaning “dream vision” or “vision-poem.”