BC1
Published on 18. February 2026
242 pages
978-1-963695-52-6 (ISBN)
Description
Luce has no idea what she's stepping into when she knocks on Big Rose Begay's front door on Mother's Day weekend, her own mom on the other side of the continent, ever staring off the beach access stairway to the sea?mourning. Whatever Mountain Meadows had meant to her father, it had ended with his ashes back at the family cemetery in Solgahatchia on the Trail of Tears. She'd brought the Martin, made good on the promise. What Edgar and Rose, who was expecting, did with it was their own business.
In BC1, the dazed travelers?like so many before them?make one last run for California and its hope for renewal. They escape for the time being whatever it is that has dogged them all the way. Then, as in all great quests, Luce must turn back toward home, with little but prayer and the newly won knowledge of what matters most in this world as guide.
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Arkansas native Michael Gills is the author of thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including Before All Who Have Ever Seen this Disappear (Madville 2023), New Harmony (Raw Dog Screaming Press). Burning Down My Father's House (Texas Review Press 2023). Other work has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Southern Humanities Review's Theodore Hoefner Prize for Fiction, Southern Review's Best Debut of the Year, recognition in the Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize Anthology, and inclusion in New Stories from The South: The Year's Best. His undergraduate novel writing workshop has been featured in USA Today, and several of his students have gone on to publish books of their own, including Emi Wright's Alegría (Madville Publishing 2021) and Katie Sanyal's Lady of the House (Madville 2025). Gills is a Distinguished Honors Professor at the University of Utah, where he lives in the hills with his wife of thirty-four years, Jill.
