Daren Dean is the author of Far Beyond the Pale, I'll Still Be Here Long After You're Gone: Stories, The Black Harvest: A Novel of the American Civil War, This Vale of Tears, Roads, and Lovesick, a prose chapbook. The Black Harvest was nominated for the Pen/Faulkner, the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction, and the Midlands Author Award. Roads was a featured Indie review in Kirkus Reviews in 2023. Dean is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lincoln University of Missouri.

Schedule

Noon to 1:00 pm
State Library, Second Floor, Meeting Room
Fiction from Fact: Louisiana Novels of Subterfuge, Survival, and the Human Spirit
Charles J. Ballay and Susan D. Mustafa, Blood Moon Over Bohemia
Daren Dean, Shelter Me: A Novel
Diane C. McPhail, Follow the Stars Home: A Novel
Owen Pataki, Smoke in the Cypress: A Napoleonic Officer in New Orleans
with moderator Tracy Carr

1:15 pm to 2:00 pm
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

2:15 pm to 3:15 pm
A.Z. Young Park, Author Tent B
Between Confession and Concealment: Short Stories of the Modern Soul
Teresa Tumminello Brader, Secret Keepers: Stories
Daren Dean, The New Salvation and Other Stories
Jennifer Anne Moses, You’ve Told Me Before: Stories
with moderator A.E. Rooks

3:30 pm to 4:15 pm
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

Shelter Me: A Novel

Shelter Me is a novel of the epic “no name” flood in August 2016 in central and southern Louisiana—a rare, 500-year historic event. The storm dumped 20-30 inches of rain in a mere three days across several parishes in the central and southern parts of the state, wreaking loss and devastation in its wake. The narrative centers on the lives of neighbors who reside on Eden Church Road in the fictional town of Satsuma Grove in Livingston Parish. This is a story of the resilient spirit of the people of the Pelican State and how neighbors pull together to survive in the grips of a natural disaster that destroyed homes and property, tore many families apart while simultaneously binding others together.

"Dean’s greatest power is his beauty of storytelling and it’s delivered on every page along with the age old saying, that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger."—Frank Bill author of Back to the Dirt, Crimes in Southern Indiana, Donnybrook, and The Savage

"Daren Dean employs a variety of perspectives and voices in this incisive, moving novel, but at the heart of each of his character’s stories is, as the title suggests, the basic human longing for shelter – for refuge, for sanctuary, for comfort. The awful storm threatening the lives and property of the residents of Satsuma Grove, Louisiana, propels the residents toward a greater understanding of what shelter truly means. Shelter Me is a nuanced and wise work of art, honest but consoling."—John Gregory Brown, author of Decorations of a Ruined Cemetery, The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur, and A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

The New Salvation and Other Stories

In his second story collection, Daren Dean delves in to what William Faulkner once described as the only thing worth writing about: “the human heart in conflict with itself." From the rural Midwest to the Deep South, Dean's stories explore the tension, beauty, and profound sadness of the human condition. These stories will thrill, provoke outrage, and invite readers to contemplate the fragile beauty and conflicts of the human soul.

Praise for The New Salvation and Daren Dean

“Daren Dean is a master at excavating the contradictions inherent in the hearts of men and these layered stories weave together a kind of brutal realism alongside moments of gorgeous poetic reflection. We, the readers, feel the pains and struggles of these deeply complex characters who are doing their best, even when their best ain’t good enough.”–Andrew K. Clark, author of Where Dark Things Grow

"The boys and men of Daren Dean’s The New Salvation all desperately want to do right, but the world isn’t making it easy for them. Pressures and expectations come from all sides, but especially from fathers. Responsibilities weigh heavily, and Dean’s protagonists strain to keep things afloat, but as one character in ‘Tomorrow Is a Long Time’ says, ‘By the time you’re old enough to understand anything, the few things you do learn come too late to help you very much.’ These are gutsy stories that grapple with the hardest of questions, and as in life, good answers never come easy. The New Salvation is unforgettable and utterly satisfying.”–Kevin Grauke, author of Shadows of Men and Yonderites

“Daren Dean writes of two brothers, ‘He had sent Craig several letters and they had all been returned unopened. His daddy gave him updates about Craig like he was a boy he had once gone to school with. He knew there was a rift between the brothers, but he had never asked about it because he felt it was a personal matter between them to resolve or not. And how his brother was dead and there was no time left for reconciliation.’ These moments a family’s nuance, strife, and intimate knowledge of one another embody the heart of The New Salvation, a remarkable short story collection that seamlessly interweaves timeless questions of how one generation’s trauma bleed into the next with meditations on masculinity, segueing into stories of gators, holographic preachers, and dentist visits gone awry along the way. These are stories of universalities and eventualities, told with an earnest grit no author can capture quite like Dean.”–Michael Chin, author of My Grandfather's an Immigrant, and So Is Yours and This Year's Ghost

“Devoted readers of Daren Dean—of whom I am one—will be delighted by The New Salvation. Dean writes prose that isn’t afraid to show off its calluses. His sentences still land like gut-punches, even as they--in the indelible words of one of his narrators—'reach up to the moon like savage prayers.’ But The New Salvation also proves that Dean has considerably more stylistic muscles to flex, as he weaves thrilling elements of sci-fi, Southern Gothic, and madcap farce into his trademark dirty realism. The New Salvation is a captivating performance by a Missoura maestro.”–John Waddy Bullion, author of This World Will Never Run Out of Strangers: Stories

“Daren Dean’s The New Salvation and Other Stories has more bangers in it than an AR clip. Dean’s tightly spun tales are a kaleidoscope’s view into the full range of human emotion...Dean is simply a masterful, gritty, storyteller, with a voice that vibrates in your head in the best possible way long after you put the book down.”–JD Clapp, Author of A Good Man Goes South: Stories and Poachers and Pills