NATCHEZ AT SUNSET

“Terry Engel has written a wondrous novel. It's the profound romance of a man for the land, the grace of place, the sounds and smells and sweat of real people in a real out-of-town world, the not-so-well-to-do exurbs, smart people, sensitive people, thoughtful people, doing their lives justice in a place and a way we don’t read about so much these days. The place is everywhere between cities and towns, the farmland, clear cut, pasture land, fields of crops that surround us all. In particular, in this case, outside of Natchez, Mississippi, up on the bluff overlooking the big river, and down in the hollows farther out of town. Natchez at Sunset is a remarkable tour de force, a disclosure of what it’s like not in the cities, not on the internet 14 hours a day, not in the cool clubs or casinos or beaches, but out in the world of the cool evening dirt, in the weeds, out by the livestock, in the woods and down by a small river in these United States today. The novel is a lovely, rich, detailed, rewarding story of a not quite perfectly fitted couple rearranging themselves and a few other favorite creatures so that the fit gets better over time. It’ll please you and tease you and surprise you and, eventually, shock and sadden you, break your heart in a dozen pieces. Not the kind of thing you come across very often these days. A book worthy of being cherished.” -- Fredrick Barthelme, an American novelist and short story writer

Publishing date: June 8, 2021

Language : English

Paperback: 252 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1-955196-53-6

Dimensions: 6 x 0.78 x 9 inches

A Mississippi native, Terry Engel grew up dreaming of white-water rivers and mountains, and he has traveled widely and lived in Colorado and Alaska. However, his fiction and nonfiction continually wander back to the slow rhythms of the South—Mississippi and Tennessee and Arkansas—back to the deep pine and bottomland hardwood forests, open pastureland and fields, tannin-stained and cypress-lined creeks, and its people.</p><p>Engel studied Forest Resources at Mississippi State University and worked as quality control and production supervisor in particleboard mills and wood preservative treatment plants. He was a lineman for the Tennessee Valley Authority, building high voltage powerlines for three years, and he has held other jobs selling books, suppressing fires for the Mississippi Forestry Commission, working assembly lines, painting houses, and delivering exotic birds to pet stores. He earned a Ph.D. in writing from the University of Southern Mississippi, where he studied at the Center for Writers with Frederick and Steven Barthelme and Mary Robison. His work has appeared in a number of literary journals and magazines, and he has received the Transatlantic Review Award, won the Hemingway Days Short Story Writing Contest, and received an honorable mention from Pushcart Prize.