Jeff High Invited To The 2013 SIBA Convention In New Orleans
A new author asked to read from his not-yet-released, debut, novel at the 2013 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) convention?
It seems outrageous, but it is true. Author Jeff High has been formally requested to read from his debut novel, “More Things In Heaven And Earth: A Novel Of Watervalley,” at the 2013 SIBA Convention in New Orleans, and the book won’t even be released until October 1st.
Jeff grew up on a big farm in a small, rural town in Middle Tennessee. He is the youngest of 5 boys and after graduating high-school at the age of 17, he worked his way through college to earn a B.A. in Literature from Belmont University in Nashville.
When asked about it, he jokes “I remember the day that I completed my last exam. I walked out of the building and threw all of my books and papers into the air without a care in the world. In my mind, it was kind of a slow-motion victory finish, something like “Chariots of Fire,” which didn’t come out until years later. But as it turned out, it was neither slow-motion, nor a victory, nor a finish.”
His dream was to write and teach literature, but life got in the way.
He finishes the story with “It all hit me pretty quickly, the text-book that fell straight-down on top of me, a couple notebooks, the reality that I was going to have to pick up the whole mess, and the fact that I now had to find a job that would support my wife and our future family. I guess it has worked out in the end. She ended up teaching and now I get to write…when I’m not working back-to-back twelve-hour shifts in the O.R.”
His new book, “More Things In Heaven And Earth,” has been published by Penguin Group (USA) and is great story about a young doctor, Luke Bradford, who works out a deal with a small town in Tennessee to be their town doctor in exchange for the town taking on the burden of his exuberant student loan debt. It is by no means his ideal situation, and he has a rather bumpy go of it. This book illustrates the best of small-town America and great southern literature. It is the first in a new series called Watervalley Books, and the second novel is expected in 2014.
