Zachary Steele in conversation with Thomas McConnell | The Weight of Ashes

Join us for a conversation with local author, Zachary Steele, and ward-winning Hub City Press author, Thomas McConnell! We will be celebrating the release of Steele's newest novel, The Weight of Ashes on Tuesday August 31st, at 7PM! This will be a hybrid event, with free in-person seating available at Hub City Bookshop and Facebook livestreaming for anyone who would like to tune in online! Please register to attend. 

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The Weight of Ashes

by Zachary Steele

• • •

After a car accident claims his older brother's life, Mark Murphy's world is turned upside down. The silence of their shared bedroom, the memories of Mitch's guidance, and his mother's drunken spiral are constant reminders of the cost of his absence. But Mark isn't ready to grieve. He isn't ready to accept that his brother is truly gone. Despite the insistence of the adults in his life that he accept Mitch's death, Mark is undeterred.

They don't know what he knows.

They don't know the story of the Witch on Spook Hill.

Aided by his loyal band of misfit friends, Mark's plan to carry Mitch's ashes to the witch is complicated by the pursuit of the town sheriff and the cousin responsible for his brother's death. With no time to regroup, Mark and his friends must navigate the dangerous path to Spook Hill before the sun sets, so that Mitch can be resurrected in exchange for the life of the one who took it.

Broadleaf Writers Association Founder & Executive Director Zachary Steele is the author of Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO and Flutter: An Epic of Mass Distraction. He has been featured by NPR, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Publishers Weekly, Baby Got Books, Shelf Awareness, and was nominated for the Sidewise Award for Alternate Fiction. You can follow his ramblings on writing and life at http://zacharysteele.com/.

Thomas McConnell's work has appeared in the Connecticut Review, the Cortland Review and Shenandoah, among other publications. He has received the South Carolina Academy of Authors Fiction Fellowship, the Hackney National Literary Award for the Short Story, and his story collection A Picture Book of Hell and Other Landscapes was published by Texas Tech University Press. His novel, The Wooden King, which won the Gold IPPY award for wartime fiction, was published by Hub City Press in 2018. He teaches English at the University of South Carolina Upstate.