I’m proud to announce the publication of my friend Ed Davis’ new novel, the Psalms of Israel Jones. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of it and would highly recommend it to lovers of literature everywhere, particularly if you like an intensely driven character studies grounded in the dark and troubled underbelly of the land of rock-in-roll.
Here’s what Lee Abbott, author of Dreams of Distant Lives, has to say about it:
“I love this book, not least for the zillion other writers (and religious thinkers) I find in it, among them Dickens, Melville, Jonathan Edwards, Increase Mather, Walker Percy, Billy Sunday, Thomas Merton . . . The plot is straight out of On the Road with the same moral risk and ambiguities. [And] I love the music we get to “hear” between these margins, from the great blues artists of yore (Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, etc.) to the superstars of more recent times (Springsteen, the Grateful Dead, etc.). Is Israel Jones a nearly mythic figure come to redeem us? Sure. But he’s also a fellow who respects an art form born of anger and woe and desperate times. His story obliges us to look back even as we drift farther and farther from the promises we once upon a time made.”
If you’re looking for a good read, give it a shot. You won’t be disappointed! The book is available from the publisher, West Virginia University Press, at Amazon, and locally at Epic Bookshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Good luck, Ed–You’re going to make a lot of readers happy.
