Towns without Rivers

In his stirring second novel, Michael Parker paints a vivid portrait of a young woman determined to escape her past. Revisiting Trent -- the Southern town so poignantly rendered in his acclaimed first novel, "Hello Down There -- Parker turns his attention to Reka Speight, a character whose strength of spirit brings her as passionately to life as any female character in contemporary literary fiction.Reka Speight is determined to discover a wider world than the rural backwater that has an almost malevolent grip on her. Armed with nothing but her sharp instincts and a hard-won education she earned while behind bars, Reka lies her way into a job that takes her thousands of miles west.But it also takes her away from the one person she cares about, her younger brother Randall. Their special bond has always set them apart from the rest of the Speight clan; Reka knows she can't be happy until Randall has escaped their family's legacy of poverty, narrow-mindedness, and alcoholism. Reka hasn't seen Randall since she was released from jail, and she must entrust her father with a letter explaining her departure -- and how Randall can find her -- in the hopes that he will soon follow.So begins a journey that takes Reka from North Carolina to Montana to Seattle; from steamy Trent to climates colder than she's ever imagined; from prison bars to the World's Fair; and from her dead lover's bedside into the arms of a man she can't forget, no matter how hard she tries.Parker, Michael is the author of 'Towns without Rivers' with ISBN 9780380978601 and ISBN 0380978601.