New from Down & Out Books: THE LAST FAMILY by George Williams

TAMPA, Fla. - Sept. 2, 2020 - PRLog -- Down & Out Books is pleased to announce that THE LAST FAMILY by George Williams has been published on September 2, 2020 in hardcover, trade paperback and ebook formats.

About THE LAST FAMILY …

Contemporary fiction set in the South these days usually focuses on poor whites and blacks, as in the works of Barry Hannah, Ron Cooper, Chris Offutt and Michael Gills. We get it: there are poor whites and blacks rummaging through the ruins of the Confederacy trying to make sense of the rubble. The Last Family, however, by George Williams is set in upscale Mountain Brook, Alabama, outside of Birmingham, George Williams' finest book to date, The Last Family is the story of the Clayborne family, an upper middle-class white tribe of people served by black nannies, maids, gardeners, and the family fortune. When their lives go awry, they invariably return home to tap the stability of generations of resources and have a meal at the family table, big enough to seat twelve and more expensive than most people's cars. It's a seemingly perfect life.

That kind of life, however, becomes more complex when no one in the family has an actual purpose, a raison d'etre. With no monetary worries, what does one do or become? How to fill the void? We've seen suburban novels before, such as those of Cheever and Updike and Eugenides, but none as acutely honed, as keenly perceptive, and, unlike other suburban works, as fully passionate, lyrical, and painful in its display of neuroses, anxieties, and foibles. Faulkner defined the South for a century.

Now comes George Williams in The Last Family, showing us the wreckage of the New South, still confused, still running from its history and failures. Written with the poise and grace of authors long dead, The Last Family brings the South alive once again.

Meet the author …

George Williams is the author of two novels, Degenerate and Zoë, and four collections of stories, Gardens of Earthly Delight, The Valley of Happiness, Inferno, and The Selected Letters of the Late Biagio Serafim Sciarra. His stories and essays have appeared in The Pushcart Prize, Boulevard, and The Hopkins Review, among others. He is the recipient of a Michener Fellowship and a grant from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation and works as a consultant and writer for Corra Films.

In its eleventh year as an independent publisher of award-winning literary and crime fiction, Down & Out Books (https://downandoutbooks.com) is based in Tampa, Florida. For more information about the book, to request a review copy of the book, or to inquire about an interview with the author, contact info@downandoutbooks.com.