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When Gary left Zinctown, Tennessee, fourteen years ago, he left behind a father he couldn't please, a long-dead brother whose memory was inescapable, and a girl who was carrying his child. He didn't plan on coming back.

But he did. Now he's facing down his jilted girlfriend, his ailing father, his brother's ghost-and, for the first time, his fourteen year old son, Taft.

In the tradition of Richard Russo, debut novelist Stephen Marion gives us not only the story of a father and son getting to know each other for the first time, but also that of a small town whose mining industry has literally hollowed out the ground beneath their feet. Just as the characters in "Hollow Ground" struggle to create a life worth preserving but are borne away by the inevitable passage of time and accidents of life, so the mines, once the mainstay of the community, now threaten to destroy the town itself.

"Hollow Ground," told with a fine, dry wit, marks the debut of a gifted and original fiction writer.

• August 2010 Indie Next List
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