"Hundley mashes up Mark Twain and Shakespeare with a colorful adventure story about two star-crossed teen lovers. Hundley demonstrates remarkable narrative control.... Once this story sinks its claws into the reader, there's no shaking it." - Publishers Weekly
Do you enjoy coming-of-age romances? What about thrillers? How about both? Whether you like one or both genres, this is an event you won't want to miss! We are excited to host the launch event for Stephen Hundley's newest novel, Bomb Island!
Don't miss out on meeting Stephen Hundley and Skip Horack on launch day at Midtown Reader!
Book Description:
Part coming-of-age summer romance, part thriller, Bomb Island is a funny and fast-paced Southern novel exploring sub-culture communities, survival, and found family set on an island near an unexploded atomic bomb.
Summer is in full swing on Bomb Island, Georgia. Fifteen-year-old Fish lives in a commune on the three-mile stretch of sand with his chosen family: their “mother-sage” Whistle and her white tiger, Sugar, a young man named Reef, and an old man named Nutzo, who is still missing. Fish and Whistle spend the days leading tours in their glass bottom boat out to the barrier island’s namesake, an unexploded atomic bomb.
This is the summer when Fish meets Celia, the tattooed daughter of a troublesome local charter fisherman bent on exposing Whistle’s commune–and their illegal tiger. When a party at her dad’s place goes sour, Fish brings Celia back to Bomb Island in the hope that she’ll stay there with him. But they still can’t find Nutzo, the tiger’s behavior has become increasingly erratic, and everyone’s summer is about to take a strange, dark turn.
Narrated by an ensemble cast of uniquely independent outsiders who have chosen counter-culture lives informed by their desires and past traumas, Bomb Island takes a rollicking journey through the weirds and wilds of Coastal Georgia. Stephen Hundley has crafted a spirited, zany novel with a big heart that examines the strength it takes to live freely and without shame.
About Stephen Hundley:
Stephen Hundley is the author of The Aliens Will Come to Georgia First (University of North Georgia Press, 2023) and Bomb Island (Hub City Press, 2024). He is a fiction editor at Driftwood Press, a book review editor at the Southeast Review, and his stories and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Cream City Review, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MA from Clemson, an MFA from the University of Mississippi, and is currently completing a PhD in English at Florida State University.
About Skip Horack:
Skip Horack, Associate Professor, MFA University of New Orleans, JD Florida State University, specializes in fiction and creative non-fiction. He is the author of the story collection The Southern Cross (2009), winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference 2008 Bakeless Fiction Prize; and the novel The Eden Hunter (2010), a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. His work has also appeared in Oxford American, the Saturday Evening Post, Epoch, The Southern Review, Narrative Magazine, and elsewhere. Horack is a former Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where he was also a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His novel The Other Joseph was published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2015.
