The Late Rebellion

The Greaves family is the pillar of Germantown, a small South Carolina community that nestles in the folds of the Appalachian Mountains. Richard and Clara Greaves live in a stone manor paid for by the bank Richard founded three decades ago. Their oldest son, Jack, is the high school athletic director, their daughter, Emily, the county solicitor. Their youngest son, Tom, is a former champion on American Ninja. Their lives appear charmed, at least until the October weekend when they begin to unravel, quickly and publicly. In the wake of shady business transactions, a floundering marriage, and Tom’s new Leonard Cohen tattoo-- the Greaves are so harried no one seems to have realized the family matriarch has suffered a stroke. Into this chaos comes Nayma, a young Mexican-American woman in a very white town, lonely Elvis, war veteran and high school groundskeeper, and Dr. Elias Agnew, a high school teacher existing behind a facade of dissimulation-- all of whom challenge traditional notions of what it means to be southern, and what it means to be accepted, particularly when the old ways begin to crumble.

Mark Powell is the author of nine novels and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and twice from the Fulbright Foundation to Slovakia and Romania. He directs the creative writing program at Appalachian State University.