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Last Kind Word is a novel that explores the ways people seek control and power in the face of the unknowable. Set in the fictional town of Thorpe, South Carolina, the story follows four main characters-Donna Neese, Melissa Burnside, Anthony Washington, and Jill McManus-struggling in the aftermath of biracial teenager Micah Burnside's disappearance. They search for a replacement for the lost connection to Micah and for a sense of control at a time when their lives seem to lack it, when other forces, be they people or circumstances or spirits, hold power over them. In the midst of this, the four of them must decide what life will look like going forward. In Thorpe, theories about what happened to Micah range from the plausible to the fantastical. Those closest to him have their own theories, too, although they are less inclined to share them with the gossip-hungry townspeople. Micah's mother Melissa, reeling from the equally mysterious loss of Micah's father Dan eighteen years earlier and the intense mood swings from her untreated bipolar disorder, is convinced that her son is alive, searching for his father in San Diego. Meanwhile, Micah's grandmother Donna believes that he is dead, murdered by Nick and Nathan Goff, Thorpe's not-so-secret meth dealers who come from a long line of rowdy and dangerous men. Jill, Micah's ex-girlfriend and a recent college drop-out, worries that a prank they played on a hoodoo practitioner is somehow to blame not only for the dissolution of their relationship, but also Micah's disappearance. Jill seeks the aid of a hoodoo conjurer to set things right in the spirit world and, hopefully, her life. Anthony is a black country and blues musician and small-time drug dealer. His work forces him into a tenuous and volatile friendship with the Goffs, one that could explode into anger and violence at any moment. Anthony also thinks the Goffs have something to do with Micah's disappearance, but he believes his friend is alive, just laying low after a lie leads to the Goffs' arrest. These four characters must grapple with long-standing feuds, secrets, and family discord as they try to solve the mystery of Micah's disappearance and come to grips with the possibility that he may never be found.

Living Without: Stories of Vandler County As Told By James Madison Redd studies the transition of the rural, and behind-the-times South, which was once firmly situated in place and time, into the present where Southern identity has become confused. The stories follow a Faulknerian trend by sharing a setting in a fictional county located in North Mississippi. All of the stories are interrelated and contain common characters. The genre is the Southern Gothic, and the time range is from the sixties to the present. Preceding the collection of stories is a critical introduction that explores the possibility of expanding the definition of movement, thereby increasing its significance within the craft of fiction.

Tumbleweed Road is a novel that began as a short story in a fiction workshop many years ago. The novel is set in the contemporary American South and traces one tumultuous summer in the life of a 14-year-old girl named Carolina Wells. The plot of the story is as follows: Carolina, a 14-year-old girl from Crow, Florida, does not understand her mother and remembers little about her past. In the story, we meet Carolina, her mother, "Mama," and two brothers, Johnny and Austin. Carolina does not understand her mother and her wild nature. At home, Carolina is forced to care for her two younger brothers. Carolina's father is long gone out of the picture, and Carolina was always told by her mother that she has no father - no one worth speaking of, anyway. Carolina can't remember why her father is gone, but remembers the fight that caused him to leave, and she blames her mother entirely for his leaving when she was just a toddler. Carolina questions her Mama about the disappearance of her father, but she refuses to even speak his name. Carolina desperately wants normalcy, family, and love - through a series of life-changing events involving a range of characters, including a spiritual woman across Tumbleweed Road, a mysterious girl named West and an old friend named Cade, this novel is about Carolina's quest to find her place in this world.

In Overcoming the Regional Burden: History, Tradition, and Myth in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy, I contend that McCarthy's literary aesthetic develops and changes as he moves from Tennessee to Texas. McCarthy's conspicuous Southern and Southwestern regional affiliations have led critics to expect his works to recapitulate native history, traditions, and myths. Yet, McCarthy transcends provincial regionalism by challenging the creation of the regional and national myths we confuse with our actual histories and identities. McCarthy's fictions point away from accepted histories and point instead to figures marginalized by society and myth makers. These figures, according to McCarthy, are just as much a part of the creation of myth as those figures indelibly imprinted on our consciousness by literary and historical tradition. My dissertation, in many respects, focuses on McCarthy's debunking of both literary and historical tradition, and his concomitant revitalization of American identity.