Author Bio
Daren Dean was born in Mexico, MO. He is a 1986 graduate of Mexico Senior High. He is the author of the novel Far Beyond the Pale, I'll Still Be Here Long After You're Gone: Stories, The Black Harvest: A Novel of the American Civil War, and This Vale of Tears. His latest novel ROADS is forthcoming in 2023. Dean did his undergraduate work at the University of Missouri and as an English Fellow at Central Methodist University. He earned his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His work has been featured in Bloom, Bull, The Chattahoochee Review, The Columbia Tribune, Ecotone, Fiction Southeast, Flyover Country Literary Magazine, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, Huffpost, Kirkus Reviews, Louisiana Literature, Maryland Literary Review, Midwestern Gothic, Ploughshares, StorySouth, Yemassee. His story "Affliction" was a Finalist in the Glimmer Train Short Fiction Contest for New Writers. His short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times. In addition, The Black Harvest was recently shortlisted for the Missouri Author Award. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lincoln University of Missouri. He now lives in Jefferson City Missouri with his wife, Cassie, and their children.
From the author of Far Beyond the Pale, I’ll Still Be Here Long After You’re Gone: Stories, and The Black Harvest: A Novel of the American Civil War, comes a story of a sprawling cast of incorrigible and sometimes violent characters, each bent on their own quest to uncover meaning and find a place in the world. In a rave review HuffPost hailed Pale, “Visceral, authentic southern language flows throughout the starkly honest prose, performing a brutal, violent dance that is all at once hard to watch, yet impossible to turn away from.” Of The Black Harvest, Kirkus Reviews said, “Dean’s writing also offers a striking brew of poetry and punch, combining unflinching realism with delicately woven imagery.” This Vale of Tears paints a searing picture, a clash of the gothic themes of good and evil, in the lives of rural people in the Show Me state. We follow the intertwined lives of Walker Scofield, a man who wonders where he went wrong with his children and grandchildren as his tenuous grip on reality begins to slip; Merle Scofield, Troy’s father, an alcoholic, who hopes to find the strength to unite his family; Troy Scofield, haunted by the memory of his mother (a former soap star) who walked out on the family when he was a boy and is determined to confront his wife's lover; Alisha Scofield, Troy’s insatiable wife tosses him aside for the arms of another man only to discover she wants him back; Glenny Scofield, a truant who steals a baby in a jar of formaldehyde from the local college museum leading to his transformation as The Boy of God; Theron Beecher, an old man who sometimes hears the voices of the dead imploring him to care for the embattled Scofields; Ruby Phelps, a fierce matriarch determined to exact her revenge on the Scofields; Cyrus Phelps, a sometimes bail bondsman and dog breeder and the brute instrument of Ruby’s retribution; Raelyn Phelps, a young woman who finds the strength to escape her family's overbearing confines and follow her heart's own song. When Troy and Raelyn meet, they form an instant bond that will lead them on a cross country trip through the south to New Orleans in an effort to escape the strangling family ties of the past in the dark heart of the Little Dixie.
"Daren Dean's spectacular, distinct writing in This Vale of Tears brings us into the vivid and memorable worlds of the Scofield and Phelps families. This is a beautiful and affecting novel, and Daren Dean is a unique and powerful storyteller of the American South."–Karen Bender, National Book Award Finalist and author of Refund, Like Normal People, The New Order, and others
"The novel follows multiple points of view as it introduces Troy Scofield and Raelyn Phelps, an older man and younger woman from fierce families who use each other in an effort to escape all manner of heartache. The work grounds Dean in a genre he knows well: "grit-lit," an unflinching yet often darkly comic style of writing that draws from influences such as Faulkner and O'Connor."--The Columbia Tribune
This Vale of Tears, A Novel and others found HERE