Drag the Darkness Down

Odom Shiloh is in trouble. His job is going nowhere, his marriage is on the ropes, and running over a French cyclist in Memphis didn't help. Now his sister, the piano virtuoso Birdshit, has run off with a local high school football star. Enter Blakey Flake, an art history teacher and armchair philosopher turned private investigator: off they go in search of Birdshit, encountering evangelical preachers, articulate foreigners, drug addicts in Superman underwear and, of course, the cops. But as the pair wind their way from Arkansas to Kansas City one cigarette at a time, Odom realizes that he isn't really running after Birdshit; he's actually running away from his past. "Drag the Darkness Down is a brilliant picaresque novel in the tradition of the great Arkansans Charles Portis and Donald Harington.  Matt Baker proves to be a master storyteller, possessed with an unforgettable voice and imagination.  I couldn't put this novel down, and I predict that Odom Shiloh will stand as one of the most recognizable narrators in the twenty-first century." -George Singleton, author of The Half-Mammals of Dixie "In Drag the Darkness Down Matt Baker takes us on a fresh gothic trip among the odd and their weird energy, folks with the vigor and sterling bad habits you look for in friends. A trip not meant for the delicate, maybe, but others who come along will be rewarded." -Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone