COMING SOON: VILLAGES

From THE UNIVERSITY OF WEST ALABAMA’S LIVINGSTON PRESS
hardcover (exclusively at The Alabama BookSmith), PaperBack and e-book editions.  

21-year-old Jonas Boulware has come home to Copernicus, his small southern town, after serving as a medic in the Middle East, where he was severely wounded performing a heroic act.  As his body heals, he keeps memories of the trauma at bay.  He doesn’t remember and doesn’t intend to.  He is home, trying to figure out who he has become and how he can deal with it.  But trauma assails him in Copernicus, too: an abusive father and a mother who bears the burden of a long-ago family scandal.  He renews friendships – a high school classmate, a physician/mentor, and the Black owner of a golf course. An instinctual caregiver, Jonas takes in (and falls in love with) a down-on-her-luck young folksinger, he tries to rescue a teenaged boy from his squalid, dangerous home life.  But bits and pieces of his wartime trauma intrude in nightmares and flashbacks, until he admits that he suffers from PTSD and must come to grips with it to survive. With help from friends and an unorthodox counselor, he takes steps toward facing his past and moving into his profoundly altered present and future. In doing so, Jonas uncovers secrets from his past that cast new and hopeful light on his new normal.

Read the first chapter.

Praise for VILLAGES

“In this taut and beautifully crafted novel, Alabama native Robert Inman weaves a tale of surprises and secrets in a small Southern town, revealed by the homecoming of 21-year-old Jonas Boulware from the terrors of war in Afghanistan. 

Jonas suffers from PTSD, having returned to the familiar confines of Copernicus, a rural village where he now feels both welcome and estranged. As his story unfolds, we learn in fits and starts about things he saw and survived as a medic - the lunacy of a war where progress was difficult to measure, and in the end, the fundamental mission was simply, somehow, to remain alive. 

The IEDs - the enemy’s primary weapon of choice - did not discriminate between heroes and fools among the ranks of Boulware’s fellow Marines. And after his ordeal of combat ended, the nightmares that came every night soon made him wonder if he was losing his mind. 

None of this was easy for the people back home to understand, certainly not his abusive father or disillusioned mother, though in the end Jonas does find his share of allies - a country doctor, a high school buddy, an itinerant folk singer down on her luck who eventually becomes a romantic partner. 

Robert Inman’s gift for character is on full display in these pages, a reflection, I’ve always thought, of his own boyhood in Elba, Alabama. He grew up in the complicated shadow of World War II, when the Greatest Generation came home to a land that was suddenly unfamiliar. From race relations to the role of women in American life, the war, it seemed, had changed everything, tearing at old familiar patterns, and forcing a kind of historical reckoning that could bring out both the best and the worst. 

Inman absorbed this disconcerting truth with a deeply felt and clear-eyed sympathy, reflected in a string of first rate novels - Home Fires Burning, Old Dogs and Children, Dairy Queen Days, and more. He was published for a time by Little Brown, a national imprint where he was a critically acclaimed mid list author. But as the book business changed, becoming more nakedly driven by profit, Inman struggled to find a home for Villages, his latest labor of love, until he turned to one of Alabama’s literary treasures. At Livingston Press, a publisher based at the University of West Alabama, editor Joe William Taylor has assembled an impressive list of ambitious novels and acclaimed short fiction. 

Inman fits well among the ranks of Livingston authors, taking his place with the likes of William Gay, Suzanne Hudson, and Christy Alexander Halberg, to give us some of the best fiction I have read in recent years. Certainly, in the case of Villages, we discover a literary page-turner in which even the noblest characters have secrets and flaws, and the worst are part of the path to redemption. 

Ultimately, the story of Jonas Boulware gives us hope, while serving as a cautionary tale about the deadly foolishness of war. Jonas and Doc and Ray and Lyric - all the brave and troubled characters you will come to know in these pages - are likely to find a place in your heart long after the final page is turned. And in a novel as graceful as it is full of pain, Robert Inman reminds us again - quietly, as he always does - that he is one of our finest storytellers. 

Villages is brilliant, violent, tender, full of love; a novel I am grateful to have read, and one I absorbed in a single sitting, for I simply could not put it aside.”

Frye Gaillard, whose latest book is Heroes and Other Mortals: Stories of Our Better Angels. He is a member of the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. 

“To see a world in a grain of sand.” What William Blake expressed in poetry, Bob Inman captures in prose in his exquisite new novel, “Villages.” Twenty-one year old Jonas Boulware is in a world of hurt - physically, emotionally, psychologically - when he reluctantly returns to his small southern town from deployment in the Middle East.  He finds his hometown is no escape from the pain he’s trying to blot out, but by facing the passions of his past and present Jonas begins to see a world of possibilities and a path toward healing. “

Bill Whitaker, CBS News 60 Minutes 

"Among his many talents, Robert Inman has once again demonstrated he is a master novelist. As a psychiatrist and writer, I found the plot line of Villages captivating and thought provoking. With lucid prose, Inman details the journey of a young man suffering from PTSD—a byproduct of his less than conventional childhood and greatly worsened by the horrors of war. Returning to his hometown, Jonas Boulware reluctantly but bravely confronts the near and distant past, before embarking on a complex journey to heal both his physical and psychological injuries.

Villages is no doubt a page-turner with surprising plot twists. Robert Inman is a captivating storyteller. “

Jeffrey K. Smith M.D., Psychiatrist and fellow author.

“Bob Inman is often pigeon-holed as a “Southern Writer.” Geography is identity, right? But his new novel, VILLAGES, is a quintessential American story. Can you go home again? Can you start over? Jonas Boulware is a wounded vet, suffering from PTSD, old at the age of twenty-one. Inman deftly pulls us into his healing process, revealing to the reader what Jonas has to discover for himself...that his wounds began long before he went to war. Recovery is possible, but only if he confronts the truth.”

Larry Baker, author of HARRY AND SUE

“With his usual perception and verve Robert Inman has produced yet another captivating novel. Villages confirms his status as the bard of small town America. This is not just a compelling book but one with acute insights into the human condition, and the value of human community. A must-read for anyone who is interested in the hidden recesses of the heart and our need for human connection.”

Ralph Keyes, author of The Courage To Write

“Robert Inman is a past master at depicting the complexities and richness of southern small town life. In this story of a severely wounded and traumatized Gulf War vet who comes home to the town of Copernicus to try to put the pieces of his shattered self together, Inman is at the top of his craft.”

William Phillips, retired Editor-In-Chief, Little, Brown

AVAILABLE Amazon Kindle: The First FIVE

Robert Inman's acclaimed novels Home Fires Burning, Old Dogs and Children, Dairy Queen Days, Captain Saturday, and The Governor’s Lady are now available in digital format on Amazon Kindle, priced at $3.99 (or free for Kindle Unlimited), and on loan from Kindle Lending Library.

Read reviews at www.goodreads.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.amazon.com.

Read summaries and first chapters of all books by clicking on the titles at the top of the page under "Books."

From Netflix: Home Fires Burning

Robert Inman's film adaptation of his first novel, Home Fires Burning, is now available on DVD from Netflix.  Home Fires Burning originally aired on CBS-TV as a "Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentation --  starring Neil Patrick Harris, Kyle Chandler, Barnard Hughes, Bill Pullman and Sada Thompson.

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