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A Novel
by Tim Westover
Water spirits, moon maidens, haunted pianos, headless revenants, and an invincible terrapin that lives under the mountains. None of these distract James Holtzclaw from his employer's mission: to turn the fading gold-rush town of Auraria, GA, into a first-class resort and drown its fortunes below a man-made lake. But when Auraria's peculiar people and problematic ghosts collide with his own rival ambitions, Holtzclaw must decide what he will save and what will be washed away.
Taking its inspiration from a real Georgia ghost town, Auraria is steeped in the folklore of the Southern Appalachians, where the tensions of natural, supernatural and artificial are still alive.
"Starred Review. Fact and fancy are intertwined cleverly and seamlessly in a top-notch, thoroughly American fantasy." - Publishers Weekly
"Envision Lewis Carroll on a romp through the mountains of Georgia, discovering a land of shimmery mystery and spirits, humble monsters, quirky characters, singing trees and vengeful fish. The best part is that Tim Westover can really write." - Josephine Humphreys, Hemingway/PEN Award Winner, author of Rich in Love
"Mr. Westover brings my beloved Georgia to life, complete with spells, haints, and moon maidens. Not since Wendell Berry has an author woven such a beautifully intricate southern community." - Ann Hite, author of Ghost On Black Mountain
This information about Auraria 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.
Tim Westover was born in Rhode Island in 1982 and migrated to the South, by way of England and Russia. He currently lives in the Atlanta area, where he keeps himself busy with a newborn baby and an open-backed banjo.
His first book, Marvirinstrato, a collection of short stories in Esperanto, was short-listed for Esperanto Book of the Year 2010, and three of the stories won prizes in the "Belartaj Konkursoj."
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