Yonder Stands Your Orphan

Barry Hannah has long been considered one of the country's best living writers, whose singular voice and wicked genius for storytelling have earned him legions of diehard fans. His first novel in 10 years, Yonder Stands Your Orphan opens with the establishment of an orphans' camp and the discovery of an abandoned car with two skeletons in the trunk.
Man Mortimer, a pimp and casino pretty boy who resembles dead country singer Conway Twitty, has just been betrayed, and his revenge becomes a madness that will ravage the Mississippi community of Eagle Lake and give vent to his lifelong fascination with knives. The pompous young sheriff is useless at solving the crimes, so Mortimer's only challengers are three eccentric Christians--a disgraced doctor and two ex-bikers, all prey to their addictions--and an African American Vietnam veteran whose wife is ill with cancer. Mortimer has a hold on each one of them--a longstanding debt, a forgotten crime, or responsibilities they cannot yet desert. Yonder Stands Your Orphan paints a searing picture of the American South and establishes Barry Hannah once again as one of the most important writers in America.

Barry Hannah's eleven other books include the collections High Lonesome and Airships, which is regarded as a modern classic. He has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was nominated for the American Book Award for Ray and the National Book Award for Geronimo Rex, which won the William Faulkner Prize. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.