This Strange Evening Land

This Strange Evening Land is a story set in the most remote and isolated realms of Appalachia, the world of the author’ s father, grandparents, and generations of great grandparents. Teenagers Leaf Ann Polk and her brother, Ezra, live alone in the back-woods hollow where they were raised, on the farm they inherited when their mother died. Their father, Clydell Payne, and his identical twin brother, Cas, had left the county years ago and never returned after their tours of duty in Vietnam. Cas was listed MIA, and it is believed throughout the county that he perished in the war. But Cas survived. Claiming to be Clydell, he returns to Laurel County and attempts to finagle ownership of the Polk land, threatening to displace Leaf Ann and Ezra.

Tom McKinley Ball lives in his home town of Asheville, North Carolina, where he works as senior writer for the David Lynch Foundation and director of a meditation center. He received an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. His poetry has appeared in the Paris Review, Western Humanities Review, and other literary journals. His debut novel, This Strange Evening Land, draws in part on stories passed down through his family, whose roots in western North Carolina go back many generations.