Overview

There are not a plethora of novels set in Northeastern Arkansas and the bootheel of Missouri, but Pope’s debut novel explores this beautiful and sparsely populated country, full of cotton fields and tiny towns—and is all the richer for the author’s relationship to this setting and the characters of this story. Gods of Green County began as a series of poems published in Arkansas Review and is based on Mary Elizabeth Pope’s family history—her grandmother’s commitment to an insane asylum and her brother’s murder by a sheriff on the main street of town, the snake-handling Pentecostal church her father grew up in (which Pope sometimes attended), and the many decades her family worked in cotton. She even has copies of her grandmother’s records and mugshot from the asylum and the newspaper article about her brother’s murder by a sheriff on the main street of town. Although Pope herself grew up in Michigan, many of her relatives migrated north on the “hillbilly pipeline” for work in Flint, so even when she wasn’t down south, they were around her all the time, and their accents and stories left an indelible impression on her. This book is beautifully written, with sharp characterizations and a page-turning plot.

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9781949467710

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At the center of Mary Elizabeth Pope's compelling debut novel, The Gods of Green County, is a murder mystery, but there is so much more to be discovered along the way. It is a vivid and memorable portrait of a time and place--intricate threads weaving together a whole community--and the journeys of those forever changed.--Jill McCorkle, Hieroglyphics

Author Information

Mary Elizabeth Pope grew up in Michigan with roots deep in the Missouri Bootheel and Northeast Arkansas. She is Professor of English at Emmanuel College in Boston. She is the author of Divining Venus: Stories, and her work has been featured in the literary magazines Arkansas Review, Florida Review, Bellingham Review, Ascent, Passages North, and Fugue, among others. She holds a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. She lives outside Boston with her husband.

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