A Lovely, Indecent Departure by Steven Lee Gilbert

In 2008 I was awarded a Durham Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant for Literature. in English from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, after which I was commissioned and served four years as an officer and paratrooper in the U.S. Most of my adulthood I've spent in the Sandhills and Piedmont of central North Carolina, where I live now with my wife and family. I was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana but consider my childhood home the green, rolling foothills of East Tennessee and the southern Appalachia mountains, settlement to all sorts of interesting people, composites of which can be found throughout my writing. Objectively detailed, in a voice that refuses to intrude on the minds of its characters, A Lovely, Indecent Departure, captures in stark detail a world in which modern archetypes are turned upside down and shows what an extraordinary splash Steven Lee Gilbert has made with his first novel. But as the investigation draws them all closer to Anna, Evan’s true nature betrays itself and the question of what’s in the child’s best interest becomes not so clear anymore. Standing in the young woman’s way is Evan Meade, the boy’s guileful and mean-spirited father, who hires a private investigator when the efforts of the embattled local sheriff, Monroe Rossi, fail to track them down. Told in prose that is both stripped-down and overpowering, Gilbert shapes the everyday conflict of child custody into a stunning search for sense of worth. When a district court awards custody of Oliver to his father, she abducts the five year old and flees to Italy where with her family’s help they disappear into the fabric of her native homeland. A Lovely, Indecent Departure is the riveting and emotionally-charged debut from a promising new voice in literary thrillers, and a captivating story about a mother’s love and desperation set amidst the heart wrenching landscape of child custody.Īnna Miller wants only one thing, her son, and she will do anything to keep him.

A Lovely, Indecent Departure by Steven Lee Gilbert