Debut Southern Novel Calling Ties Religion,
Radio and Manhood Into Compelling Fiction
Evoking images of a fire-and-brimstone preacher
ranting and raving his own personal message of
salvation and a deep-voiced deejay spinning country
music and reading the local news of fish fries, car
wrecks and church bake sales, the debut novel Calling
by Joe Samuel Starnes (Jefferson Press; July 2005;
$24.95, Hardcover) digs beneath the surface of the
Southern Baptist Church, commercial radio and small-
town manhood.
Seated next to each other by happenstance on a bus
headed out of Las Vegas, fallen Southern Baptist
preacher and radio evangelist from Georgia, Ezekiel
Blizzard Jr., and a down-and-out country music deejay
from Louisiana, Timber Goodman, wouldn't appear to
be compatible. Yet as their ride through the desert
progresses and their hardscrabble stories of childhood,
drinking, drug-use, gambling, radio, religion, sex and
violence in what Flannery O’Connor called the "Christ-
haunted South" unfold, they discover they are on a
mutual quest for redemption. Just as the Greyhound
bus winds through the desert, this captivating tale takes
readers on a journey into the deepest recesses of the
human soul.
CALLING
By Joe Samuel Starnes
Jefferson Press
Publication Date: August 2005
ISBN: 0-97189-745-X
$24.95 (U.S.) / Hardcover
Media Contact:
Charlotte Lindeman
Jefferson Press
423-825-5783
clindeman@jeffersonpress.com
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