Description

New York Times bestselling author Wiley Cash will present a public reading of his work at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 17, in the Bevens Music Room of the Brown Chapel on the Lyon College campus, 2300 Highland Rd., Batesville.

Following the reading, Lyon College will award Cash the Heasley Prize for Fiction, an endowed recognition the college presents annually to a noted writer. The event is free and open to the public, and no reservation or ticket is required.

Cash gained literary recognition for his award-winning debut novel, “A Land More Kind Than Home” (2012), a mesmerizing literary thriller about the bond between two brothers and the evil they face in a small western North Carolina town. His second novel, the acclaimed “This Dark Road to Mercy” (2014), is about two young sisters and their estranged father, and “The Last Ballad” (2017), is a historical novel based on the life of workers’ rights activist Ella May Wiggins.

Cash is a native North Carolinian, and his work enlivens the landscape of this beloved home and the people he knows so well. His latest novel, “When Ghosts Come Home” (2021), is again set in North Carolina, but this time Cash shifts from the mountainous region of the state to the east coast beach town of Oak Island. Cash’s prose and storytelling are emboldened in this fully loaded suspense novel.

Cash writes about the world and celebrates its beauty, yet he is also wary of how challenging and painful it can be. The final scenes of “When Ghosts Come Home” pack an emotional wallop. Readers will be left to rethink their perceptions and retrace their steps to understand the nuanced relationships these characters have with one another.

This powerful and beautiful novel “cements Cash’s growing reputation as an outstanding contemporary writer every reader should know,” said Dr. Terrell Tebbetts of Lyon College’s English department.

For more information on the Heasley Prize and the event, please contact Dr. Tebbetts at Terrell.Tebbetts@lyon.edu.