Witches on the Road Tonight

As a child growing up in Depression-era rural Virginia, Eddie Alley’s quiet life is rooted in the rumors of his mother’s witchcraft. But when he's visited by a writer and glamorous photographer researching American folklore for the WPA, the spell of his mother’s unorthodox life is violently disrupted, and Eddie is inspired to pursue a future beyond the confines of his dead-end town. He leaves for New York and becomes a television horror-movie presenter beloved for his kitschy comedy. Though expert at softening terror for his young fans, Eddie cannot escape the guilty secrets of his own childhood. When he opens his family’s door to a homeless teenager working as an intern at the TV station, the boy’s presence not only awakens something in Eddie, but also in his twelve-year-old daughter, Wallis, who has begun to feel a strange kinship to her notorious grandmother. As the ghost stories of one generation infiltrate the next, Wallis and Eddie grapple with the sins of the past to repair their misguided attempts at loyalty and redemption. In Witches on the Road Tonight, bestselling author Sheri Holman teases out the dark compulsions and desperate longings that blur the line between love and betrayal.

Sheri Holman's first novel, A Stolen Tongue, was published by Grove/Atlantic in 1997 and was translated into thirteen languages. The Dress Lodger, also from Grove/Atlantic followed in 2000, and was a national best seller. It was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, one of the New York Public Library’s “Books to Remember,” and was long listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The Mammoth Cheese (Grove/Atlantic 2003) was her third adult novel, and was short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction and named a San Francisco Chronicle and Publishers Weekly Book of the Year. Her latest novel, Witches on the Road Tonight (Grove/Atlantic 2011), was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Sheri has also written a novel for children, Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars (Scholastic, 2002), and with Jungsoo Kim, won the Daesan Foundation Translation Prize for “The Sobbing Drum of Nakrang: Plays of Inhoon Choi.” Sheri is a founding member and currently serves on the curatorial board of The Moth. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.