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In this debut novel, a ghostwriter of the memoirs of a reclusive folk music icon - part Woody Guthrie, part Bob Dylan - attempts to glean fact from fiction, only to discover the deeper he digs into the musician's past, the more his own past rises to the surface.
Despite his fame, Eli Page is a riddle wrapped in a myth, inside decades of mask-making. His past is so shrouded in gossip and half-truths that no one knows who he is behind the act. Jack Wyeth, a budding writer, joins Eli in Galesville, a small town on the border of New York and Vermont, only to learn that the musician's mind is failing. As he scrambles to uncover the truth, Jack is forced to confront his own past, his own hang-ups, and his own fears. At the same time, he falls for a local artist who has secrets of her own, he becomes linked to a town controversy, and he struggles to let go of his childhood idols and bridge the divide between myth and reality.
Set against a folk Americana aesthetic, Lay Down Your Weary Tune is an emotionally charged exploration of myth-making, desire, and regret, and the inescapable bond between the past and present.
[A] richly textured novel about folk music...Belcher brings the folk music scene to life, but best of all is his ability to craft a cast of memorable characters." - Publisher's Weekly
"This story will pluck countless heartstrings." - Booklist
"A little more variation from expectation would have been welcome. Still, a well-intended and welcome first effort." - Kirkus
"Appealing...Mingling elements from both literature and the blues, Belcher has crafted a memorable tale about how the masks and myths we create can become prisons that ultimately disconnect us from ourselves." - Library Journal
"W.B. Belcher's debut novel evokes the legend and timelessness of a true folk song. In the town of Galesville he weaves together a carefully crafted, mysterious, and epic world of characters whose stories will keep you guessing until the very end. A folkloric treasure trove and a great read." - Jocelyn Arem, author of Caffe Lena: Inside America's Legendary Folk Music Coffeehouse
"A heartening, timeless, and stirring song for the 'perfectly broken.' Beautifully thrownback. Openhanded. True. W.B. Belcher is my kind of writer." - Matthew Quick, New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook and Love May Fail
"As beautiful and artfully constructed as an old guitar, Lay Down Your Weary Tune feels both familiar and wholly original. William Belcher's debut is a highly readable wonder." - James Scott, author of The Kept
"Like Russell Banks and Richard Russo, W.B. Belcher's warm, lyrical prose brings to life the upstate New York I know and love so well, and even more, he does it with the clarity, compassion, and humor of a master storyteller. A terrific debut novel." - Chris Millis, author, screenwriter, and executive producer of Small Apartments
This information about Lay Down Your Weary Tune was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
W. B. Belcher grew up in western Massachusetts and earned his MFA from Goddard College. He lives along the Battenkill River in upstate New York with his wife and two children. Lay Down Your Weary Tune is his first novel.
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