ALL IS BRIGHT is an 84,000-word literary novel that takes place in Christmas, Georgia—a misleading name, like something out of a Hallmark movie, when it’s really just another dying town in the rural south, one plagued by poverty and corrupt politics and a tyrannical strain of Christianity that runs deep, especially in the Ashgrove family. Elliott Ashgrove is a child prodigy and preacher’s kid whose talent for the piano borders on mystical—whenever he hears a song, he can immediately play it back both forwards and backwards. When he debuts his backwards piano playing in church and a choir member falls dead of a sudden heart attack, Elliott knows he is responsible, and that he must never play backwards again.

Elliott is the subject of the town’s fascination until Sandy Tompkins, outspoken Democrat and town pariah, returns from a tumultuous stint working for the Clinton Administration in DC. With no money and a surly nine-year-old daughter named Rosemary, Sandy comes to terms with what she’s lost—marriage, political ambitions, dignity—and struggles to start a new life. As she spirals downward, Rosemary plots her escape. Also a pianist (though certainly no prodigy), she befriends Elliott and convinces him to play backwards again, the result of which launches them into a precarious stardom that garners them an invitation to play at the 2007 White House Easter Egg Roll. Whether or not they’ll make it, however, remains suspect. Fame, envy, mental illness, and a hearty dose of Christian guilt unite the two families and threaten to dismantle them in a comical novel that explores what we choose to worship and how those things ultimately let us down.

This novel is finished but does not yet have agent representation. I am happy to consider queries!