Meet Robert
In his words…
A graduate of Florida State University, I presently reside in Atlanta Georgia with my partner. By day, I serve as Vice President of Easter Seals North Georgia, Inc., a non-profit organization strengthening children and their families at the most critical times in their development. Through my non-profit work, I am a champion for early childhood literacy. In all the hours between, I write.
Raised alongside three feral, younger brothers in the rash-inducing, subtropical climate of Cairo Georgia, I am a lifelong resident of the South. A circumstance, no doubt, leaving an indelible mark upon my voice as a writer.
Aside from sense of place, my writing is influenced and inspired by the literary work of others. As a boy, it was with great obsession, I turned the well-worn pages of Charlotte Brontë’s, Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights? Yes, another source of adoration. And Truman Capote’s debut novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, I admire with equal reverence along with everything ever written by Tennessee Williams.
Charles Dickens’ Miss Havisham is one of my all-time favorite characters. Many hours I spent playing her, wrapped in an old lace tablecloth borrowed from my mother’s linen closet—my tattered, makeshift wedding dress. Locked away in my boyhood room, I haunted the place, plotting revenge, shooing rats from the wedding cake. “Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy,” I would whisper into the impressionable ear of my lovely Estella. Break their hearts.
As an adult, my literary palate is diverse, reading everyone from the sublime Michael Cunningham to the gifted Jesmyn Ward to the incomparable Ron Rash. Though my tastes have evolved through the years, one constant remains: the impact of literature and art and music upon my writing. And my unrelenting quest to make and find beauty in this world.
About the Book
Sixteen-year-old Leontyne Skye yearns to escape Good Hope, the remote Georgia coastal barrier island where she resides. Leontyne’s heritage is bleak. Tasked with tending Damascus, an ancient fig tree beguiling haints across the river with its wind chime song, Leontyne’s mother, Eulalee, disintegrates into tufts of hair, teeth, and memory. This affliction befalls all Skye women, a fatal consequence of distilling Redemption, an addictive drug made from the figs of Damascus imbued with the essence of haints.
Leontyne also tumbles apart, her memories and hand lost in a life-altering accident suffered two years back during an event known as Tribulation Day. Through unreliable recollections of her trusted friends, the Longwood twins, Leontyne stitches a dubious understanding of who she was before she fell “the long-long ways.”
In the aftermath of Eulalee’s death, Leontyne is pressured by the Longwoods to render Redemption, continuing the legacy upon which Good Hope depends. When a handsome stranger arrives, relationships unravel as the Longwood twins battle to claim the stranger for themselves, derailing Leontyne’s plans to escape Good Hope.
Each moment Leontyne refuses Damascus, haints accumulate in menacing hordes. As Leontyne’s memories return, everything she believes to be true is called into question, including the devastating events of Tribulation Day. Leontyne soon realizes her birthright extends beyond the business of making Redemption, while her acceptance of her destiny as the Great Redeemer threatens her very existence. Her refusal: irrevocably shattering the fragile balance between the living and the dead.
