Synopses & Reviews
JACK RIGGS
When the Finch Rises is the debut novel of an author whose work will be read as classic literature for a long time to come. It is a story full of truths and revelations, transcending its fictional bounds to become something so real and so finely wrought that it will simply astonish. Jack Riggs has created an emotional testament to the myriad shades of the human condition.
It is the late 1960s in the small North Carolina mill town of Ellenton. Twelve-year-old Raybert Williams and his best friend Palmer Conroy live in cramped homes in a working-class neighborhood, but they use the vast outdoors as their personal playground. Yet hardships are never far away. Raybert’s father disappears for days at a time, only to come home broken and battered. Raybert’s mother is a loving woman who battles her own demons while struggling to keep it all together. Palmer’s family life offers no better refuge for the adventure-seeking boys.
But Raybert and Palmer have each other. And in that glorious friendship, they are significantly blessed. They dream together of space flight and moonwalks. They construct a bike jump to rival Evel Knievel’s–and they’ll run it once they work up the courage. Knievel tempted fate and won, taking a leap over twenty buses on faith alone, soaring high and landing safely, even after many crashes and broken bones. Palmer and Raybert have their own plan that, once executed, will take them all the way to the ocean, landing them intact and together on the other side of freedom.
Through the scrim of adolescence and poverty, Jack Riggs offers a glimpse of universal human foibles and singular moments of transcendence. Fiercely honest and beautifully narrated, When the Finch Rises flashes like the sharp rim of the eclipsed moon on the night when Raybert and Palmer’s fate is finally revealed.
Review
"Jack Riggs has brought to life two of the most memorable characters Ive met in a long while....Like a contemporary Tom and Huck, this pair is graced with a keen wit and eye for humor, keeping the reader in that precarious position of not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Riggss ability to find and hold that balance is remarkable. When the Finch Rises is compelling and moving a stunning debut." Jill McCorkle
Review
"Jack Riggss up-and-coming days are over. Hes here. When the Finch Rises shows great talent." Clyde Edgerton
Review
"Jack Riggss debut novel completely captures the confusion and wonder of adolescence in a small Southern town during the late 1960s. I was immediately endeared to Raybert and was mesmerized by his honest, lyrical narration. Each character is vivid and fully drawn and complex....When the Finch Rises is a hilarious and moving debut from a wonderful new voice." Silas House
Review
"You'll fall in love with Raybert as I did, in this beautiful, compelling, heartbreaking novel. I was dazzled by its seemingly simple eloquence. These characters will be with me for a long time." Lewis Nordan
Review
"When the Finch Rises is a bold novel, so rugged with truth that it seems hacked from stone. Here are pages that throb with the power of hard life. Riveting." Fred Chappell
Review
"A perfect evocation of time and place...Jack Riggs has crafted a gem of a novel here hard and brilliant, it cuts to the bone." Lee Smith, Author of The Last Girls
Synopsis
Two twelve-year-old boys in 1960s North Carolina are caught between the exhilaration of boyhood and the harsh realities of their unstable families.
About the Author
Jack Riggs’s writing has been published in The Crescent Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Habersham Review, and Writing, Making It Real. In 2000, he was selected as an “Emerging New Southern Voice” at the Millennial Gathering of Writers of the New South at Vanderbilt University. He has been a finalist in the Glimmer Train Fiction Contest and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The author teaches at Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta.