Hub City to publish Daisy Cashin's debut novel DIRT PUSHER

Hub City Press is pleased to announce it will publish Daisy Cashin's debut novel, Dirt Pusher, in the spring of 2027.

In the wake of a mass shooting at a nearby university where his daughter Macy was enrolled, gravedigger Joe Blankenship quits his job at Mountain View Cemetery in the fictional Appalachian town of Blackston, Virginia, cracks a beer between his knees, and drives to his home on the New River. There, with a summer storm rolling in, he collects his tools, feeds his donkey, and digs himself a grave. From the dirt, Joe sits in the rain and relives pieces of his life in fragments: a lonely childhood, his aunt Carroll, panic attacks, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, blackberry cobbler, Budweisers, his best friend Ricky, summer jobs, fireflies, the birth of his daughter Macy, the loss of her mother Jennine, diapers, field trips, opioids, softball games, sleepovers, fights, marshmallows, and all the holes he's dug in between. 

Cashin says, “This novel grew out of those hills that crawl from Georgia up to Maine. It’s full of love, hard jobs, laughs, beer, blackberry cobbler, porches, growth, and pain. I’m elated that it has found a home at Hub City. It’s a dream and a half to publish my first novel here.”

Daisy Cashin is a writer by way of Southwest Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in HAD, Farewell Transmission, BRUISER, ExPat Press, the Panacea Review, Maudlin House, F(r)iction, and the American Literary Review. He has an MFA from nowhere and cooks to pay rent.