Everything always catches up. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner said it best. If he couldn’t kill the past, Carmine St. Clair would live to punish himself for it and try to outrun it at the same time. Haunted by memories of a childhood stained with the so-called tough love of a God-lovin’ alcoholic father and the inky residue of his own bigotry, the last 15 years are a blur of libations and amassing trophies, women and money. Carmine has spent his whole life distancing himself from his past, those crooked lines, the dusty red clay roads of the South. But when the winning streak ends and the phone rings, he ends up right back where he started: Eton, Georgia (population 318). When the walls he’s built around himself crumble, Carmine finds love in everything he’s tried to escape: a black woman, forgiveness, himself, and the past. As he tries to figure out what the past means, what it means to be good, and what the future holds, he’ll have to decide between love and hate, darkness and light, and all the things in between. Sometimes you have to go back to where you started to learn the oldest lesson of all: you’ve got to let go of everything to gain it all. A story about love, about forgiveness, and about what it means to make a life worth living. Charming and deeply moving A Song for Carmine is a story that gives you something to leave with.