Shaking Out the Dead is about love and the human struggle to love and be loved and to recognize when to walk away from those who can’t love back. ​

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Artist and fry cook, Paris, loves Tatum but he knows her own demons separate her from true connection. Does love mean waiting for her to break through, or does it mean not expecting her to be any different than she is? Haunted by the past, Tatum longs for a belief in her own worthiness of love. She aims, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, at overcoming her impulse to run and sabotage that closest to her heart. Geneva, older than the other two, is torn between a commitment to an addled and institutionalized husband and her own significant passions. 

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A child with a dead mother, Tatum’s niece, enters their world and together they are forced to sort out the boundaries between longing and love, giving and taking, all while recognizing the limited time we have to love and live.

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A poetic journey through the landscape of the human heart, reminiscent of the work of Alice Munro and Richard Ford, Shaking Out the Dead is a novel that will take residence in your soul.

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From the author: 

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"Shaking Out the Dead is Montana noir. 

 

"James Grady and Keir Graff described Montana noir as revealing 'Montana as real as it is mythic.' They say, 'No doubt the state’s beauty will still make the very idea of Montana Noir seem incongruous to some. Noir is black-and-white. Streets and alleys. Flashing neon lighting a rain-streaked window. But while noir was definitely an urban invention, it knows no boundaries. Noir is struggle. It’s doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. It’s being trapped. It’s hubris. It’s being defeated yet going on. Sometimes it’s being defeated and not going on. 'That’s life everywhere. This is our Montana.'"

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This is Shaking Out the Dead.