A DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY SEEKS A DO-OVER IN A QUAINT TOWN, BUT IN ADDITION TO PACKING UP THEIR OWN PERSONAL DEMONS, THEY DISCOVER THE LOCALS AREN’T SO WELCOMING.

The quaint town of Lawrenceton, Missouri isn’t sending out the welcoming committee for its newest neighbors from Los Angeles—the Samples’ family. Shannon Lamb’s “Like a Virgin” fashion choices, along with her fortune-telling mother, Wendy Samples, and her no-good, cheating, jobless, stepfather, Dale Samples, result in Shannon finding few fans in L-Town where proud family lines run deep. Only townie, Eddy Bauman, is smitten with Shannon and her Valley Girl ways. The Bystanders is a dark coming-of-age story set in the 1980s when big hair was big, and MTV ruled. In a quiet town of annual picnics and landscapes, the Samples’ rundown trailer and odd behaviors aren’t charming the locals. Shannon and Wendy could really use some friends but must learn to rely upon themselves to claw their way out of poverty and abuse if they want to escape Dale. The Bystanders pays homage to Americana, its small-town eccentricities, and the rural people of the Northern Mississippi Delta region of Southeast Missouri, a unique area of the country where people still speak Paw Paw French and honor Old World traditions.

Editorial Reviews

“Without a doubt, Dawn Major is thoroughly schooled in the full-blown existence of jealousy, lust, love, confusion, pettiness, mystery, violence, hope, et al, exhibited by small-town denizens.[A2] The Bystanders stands tall in the world of coming-of-age novels”—George Singleton, author of You Want More: Selected Stories

“Dawn Major has written a gritty and hard-hitting novel about a couple of teenagers trapped in poverty, violence, and addiction. This colorful novel is set in the small real town of Lawrenceton, Missouri, whose dark side Major exposes in prose that is vivid and sensate. In the end, thankfully, Major shows that even a tragic world offers a way out. Major is a writer to watch.”—Janisse Ray, author ofThe Woods of Fannin County and Ecology of a Cracker Childhood[A3]

“Intelligent, humorous, and sublimely original, Dawn Major’s debut novel, The Bystanders, entwines short story narrative into a master tapestry of rural Missouri life in the 1980s, offering an insightful study into how people distribute responsibility and excuse their own inaction.”—Robert Gwaltney, award winning author of The Cicada Tree

“Full of passion and punch, the characters in Dawn Major’s gritty debut novel, The Bystanders, grab hold and don’t let go. Living with her family in a trailer on the outskirts of Lawrenceton, Missouri, teenager Shannon feels outcast from her peers, as her mother Wendy continually combats an abusive husband. Mother and daughter struggle to fill empty places in their hearts in this commanding story sure to touch the reader.”—Susan Beckham Zurenda, author of Bells for Eli

“The Bystanders is a deliciously dark novel. Major created a cast of characters that are at home in a Flannery O’Connor story. Readers will not put this book down until they finish the last page.”—Ann Hite, award-winning author ofHaints On Black Mountain

“Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty move over, there is a new voice on the stage, Dawn Major's first novel, The Bystanders, is about to enter the ranks of Southern Literature.”—J.M. White, Author of Pulling Down The Sun and The Beyond Within

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