Synopsis
In a small town in the Mississippi Delta, Luke May teaches local history to students too young to remember the turmoil of the civil rights era. Luke himself was just a child in 1962 when James Meredith’s enrollment at Ole Miss provoked a bloody new battle in the old Civil War. But when a long-lost friend suddenly returns to town, bringing with her a reminder of the act of searing violence that ended her childhood, Luke begins to realize that his connection to the past runs deeper than he ever could have imagined. An intricate novel of family secrets, extramarital affairs, and political upheaval, Safe from the Neighbors is a magnificent achievement.
The Washington Post - Dennis McFarland
Steve Yarbrough's engrossing new novel, Safe From the Neighbors, is a perfect example of Flannery O'Connor's famous formula for fiction: A good story just shows you what some folks will go and do, and do in spite of everything…The result is a satisfying, deftly constructed narrative that contemplates the difficulty with which we shed our ties to history, what we might learn from the mistakes of our forebears (or fail to learn), and just what a complicated and mysterious business cause and effect is…Yarbrough offers us a glimpse of a particular Southern predicament, a context and a persuasive atmosphere for this intricate, absorbing tale.