Fall Line: A Novel

by Joe Samuel Starnes

Overview

December 1, 1955: Flood gates are poised to slam shut on a concrete dam spanning the Oogasula River, creating a lake that will submerge a crossroads community and thousands of acres of woodlands in rural Georgia. The novel unfolds in one day's action as viewed through the eyes of Elmer Blizzard, a troubled ex-deputy; Mrs. McNulty, a lonely widow who refuses to leave her doomed shack by the river; Percy, her loyal, aging dog; and a rapacious politician, State Senator Aubrey Terrell, for whom the new lake is named.

Originally published in 2011 to critical acclaim, Fall Line is a story of loss, bitterness, hypocrisy, violence, and revenge in the changing South and is populated by complex characters who want to do the right thing but don't know how. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution "Best of the South" selection, Joe Samuel Starnes's novel is a memorable, beautiful, and heart-breaking tale of a backwater hamlet's damaged people and its transformed landscape.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781588385802
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	04/15/2026
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

JOE SAMUEL STARNES is the coauthor of Leth Oun’s memoir, A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service and three critically acclaimed novels, the most recent of which is Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and various magazines as well as essays, short stories, and poems in literary journals. He was awarded a fellowship for the 2006 Sewanee Writers Conference.

JOE SAMUEL STARNES is the coauthor of Leth Oun’s memoir, A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service and three critically acclaimed novels, the most recent of which is Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and various magazines as well as essays, short stories, and poems in literary journals. He was awarded a fellowship for the 2006 Sewanee Writers Conference.

Editorial Reviews

With Fall Line, Joe Samuel Starnes has written a novel that accrues force the way a swollen river becomes a torrent. … In a tightly controlled, elegant narrative, Starnes’s exacting novel brings us inside one rural community when the American South was about to burst and not one thing could hold back water or time.

TriQuarterly Online - Jessica Handler

The world Starnes creates in Fall Line is as evocative as it is conflicted. A story of land grabs, wounded families, loss, bitterness, hypocrisy, violence, and revenge in the changing South, the book reveals Starnes's uncompromising vision.

Philadelphia Stories - Julie MacDonnell Chang

Fall Line is full of small moments of beauty and anguish.

Weld for Birmingham - Mark Kelly

A quiet dazzler of a new novel. Of all the contemporary Southern novels today that draw comparisons to Faulkner and O’Connor, Starnes’s tale may be one of the few that deserves them. The unsentimental but glorious world seen through the eyes of a “half mutt half chow” fearful of man and guns is pure Faulkner. Elmer, condemning the bigwigs around him for “their fondness for impure women and liquor and money and the love of their own images reflected in shiny glass” echoes the righteous, scathing hatred of Hazel Motes (Wise Blood).

Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Gina Webb

A Southern-noir saga . . . [with Starnes an] expert in local color doing right by his all-but-vanished region.

Publishers Weekly

Starnes’s evocatively Southern story may well have readers wanting to check their shoes for red mud or find an old hound to pat. Fall Line’s message transcends region, however, leaving us at once troubled by man’s sins against nature and himself, yet knowing somehow that both will endure.

author of The South and America Since World War II - James C. Cobb

The story of people losing their land for power generation will resonate. Well worth the read.

GwinnettForum.com

At times, Fall Line is reminiscent of James Dickey's Deliverance, while at others it reminds you of Harry Crews's brilliant novel A Feast of Snakes. But Starnes applies his own eye to the Southern detail. The cast of characters is rich with color both in word and deed. Readers will see the dam construction from the view of a mutt-Chow dog, a disgruntled white male native of the farmland to be flooded and a black widow losing her only possession—home. The prose reads smooth and clean but still serves up layers of texture in scene and style.

Chattanooga Times Free Press

Starnes has produced a novel worthy of attention, providing real insight into how the power of money and government contributed to the loss of the agrarian South … Starnes knows his home area and its people and how to write about them with admirable authority and poetic understanding.

Studies in American Culture - Jean Cash

Fall Line is both a beautiful lament for the old agrarian South and an allegory for its transformation. The kind of South we find in Fall Line is gritty, rudderless, and wild, and through the point of view of a dog named Percy, Starnes zooms in on the brutality of the natural landscape.

Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers - Kevin Catalano

If you liked Deliverance by James Dickey, you'll like Fall Line by Joe Samuel Starnes. The Oogasula is about to be dammed by the Georgia Power Company and to hell with the folks whose houses and graves are going to be flooded. Some people take the money—one of them takes the law into his own hands. This novel is vividly alive with people (and a great dog) and the river.

author of Compass Rose and National Book Award-winner Spartina - John Casey

Nothing says Southern like a bunch of corrupt good ol’ boys sitting around a table gambling away the lives of poor people. Starnes rips the lid off dirty Georgia politics, skewers the haves and honors the have-nothings who pushed back when a manmade lake came along to drown their communities for electricity and big profits.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Teresa Weave

In Starnes’s account, echoes of the Old South reverberate in the New. He imbues Fall Line with a lyrical authenticity and nuance that captures a truth of place in time.

Plaza de Armas - Rod Davis

Fall Line is both a beautiful lament for the old agrarian South and an allegory for its transformation. The kind of South we find in Fall Line is gritty, rudderless, and wild, and through the point of view of a dog named Percy, Starnes zooms in on the brutality of the natural landscape.

Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers

If you liked Deliverance by James Dickey, you'll like Fall Line by Joe Samuel Starnes. The Oogasula is about to be dammed by the Georgia Power Company and to hell with the folks whose houses and graves are going to be flooded. Some people take the money—one of them takes the law into his own hands. This novel is vividly alive with people (and a great dog) and the river.

author of Compass Rose and National Book Award-winner Spartina

Starnes’s evocatively Southern story may well have readers wanting to check their shoes for red mud or find an old hound to pat. Fall Line’s message transcends region, however, leaving us at once troubled by man’s sins against nature and himself, yet knowing somehow that both will endure.

author of The South and America Since World War II

The world Starnes creates in Fall Line is as evocative as it is conflicted. A story of land grabs, wounded families, loss, bitterness, hypocrisy, violence, and revenge in the changing South, the book reveals Starnes's uncompromising vision.

Philadelphia Stories

In Starnes’s account, echoes of the Old South reverberate in the New. He imbues Fall Line with a lyrical authenticity and nuance that captures a truth of place in time.

Plaza de Armas

With Fall Line, Joe Samuel Starnes has written a novel that accrues force the way a swollen river becomes a torrent. … In a tightly controlled, elegant narrative, Starnes’s exacting novel brings us inside one rural community when the American South was about to burst and not one thing could hold back water or time.

TriQuarterly Online

Fall Line is full of small moments of beauty and anguish.

Weld for Birmingham

Starnes has produced a novel worthy of attention, providing real insight into how the power of money and government contributed to the loss of the agrarian South … Starnes knows his home area and its people and how to write about them with admirable authority and poetic understanding.

Studies in American Culture

A quiet dazzler of a new novel. Of all the contemporary Southern novels today that draw comparisons to Faulkner and O’Connor, Starnes’s tale may be one of the few that deserves them. The unsentimental but glorious world seen through the eyes of a “half mutt half chow” fearful of man and guns is pure Faulkner. Elmer, condemning the bigwigs around him for “their fondness for impure women and liquor and money and the love of their own images reflected in shiny glass” echoes the righteous, scathing hatred of Hazel Motes (Wise Blood).

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The story of people losing their land for power generation will resonate. Well worth the read. — GwinnettForum.com

Source

Starnes’s evocatively Southern story may well have readers wanting to check their shoes for red mud or find an old hound to pat. Fall Line’s message transcends region, however, leaving us at once troubled by man’s sins against nature and himself, yet knowing somehow that both will endure. — James C. Cobb, author of The South and America Since World War II

Fall Line is both a beautiful lament for the old agrarian South and an allegory for its transformation. The kind of South we find in Fall Line is gritty, rudderless, and wild, and through the point of view of a dog named Percy, Starnes zooms in on the brutality of the natural landscape. — Kevin Catalano, Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers

The story of people losing their land for power generation will resonate. Well worth the read. — GwinnettForum.com

Fall Line is full of small moments of beauty and anguish. — Mark Kelly, Weld for Birmingham

The world Starnes creates in Fall Line is as evocative as it is conflicted. A story of land grabs, wounded families, loss, bitterness, hypocrisy, violence, and revenge in the changing South, the book reveals Starnes's uncompromising vision. — Julie MacDonnell Chang, Philadelphia Stories

With Fall Line, Joe Samuel Starnes has written a novel that accrues force the way a swollen river becomes a torrent. … In a tightly controlled, elegant narrative, Starnes’s exacting novel brings us inside one rural community when the American South was about to burst and not one thing could hold back water or time. — Jessica Handler, TriQuarterly Online

At times, Fall Line is reminiscent of James Dickey's Deliverance, while at others it reminds you of Harry Crews's brilliant novel A Feast of Snakes. But Starnes applies his own eye to the Southern detail. The cast of characters is rich with color both in word and deed. Readers will see the dam construction from the view of a mutt-Chow dog, a disgruntled white male native of the farmland to be flooded and a black widow losing her only possession—home. The prose reads smooth and clean but still serves up layers of texture in scene and style. — Chattanooga Times Free Press

A Southern-noir saga . . . [with Starnes an] expert in local color doing right by his all-but-vanished region. — Publishers Weekly

If you liked Deliverance by James Dickey, you'll like Fall Line by Joe Samuel Starnes. The Oogasula is about to be dammed by the Georgia Power Company and to hell with the folks whose houses and graves are going to be flooded. Some people take the money—one of them takes the law into his own hands. This novel is vividly alive with people (and a great dog) and the river. — John Casey, author of Compass Rose and National Book Award-winner, Spartina

Starnes has produced a novel worthy of attention, providing real insight into how the power of money and government contributed to the loss of the agrarian South … Starnes knows his home area and its people and how to write about them with admirable authority and poetic understanding. — Jean Cash, Studies in American Culture

Nothing says Southern like a bunch of corrupt good ol’ boys sitting around a table gambling away the lives of poor people. Starnes rips the lid off dirty Georgia politics, skewers the haves and honors the have-nothings who pushed back when a manmade lake came along to drown their communities for electricity and big profits. — Teresa Weaver, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In Starnes’s account, echoes of the Old South reverberate in the New. He imbues Fall Line with a lyrical authenticity and nuance that captures a truth of place in time. — Rod Davis, Plaza de Armas

A quiet dazzler of a new novel. Of all the contemporary Southern novels today that draw comparisons to Faulkner and O’Connor, Starnes’s tale may be one of the few that deserves them. The unsentimental but glorious world seen through the eyes of a “half mutt half chow” fearful of man and guns is pure Faulkner. Elmer, condemning the bigwigs around him for “their fondness for impure women and liquor and money and the love of their own images reflected in shiny glass” echoes the righteous, scathing hatred of Hazel Motes (Wise Blood). — Gina Webb, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

From the Publisher