The
Prodigal, Michael’s debut novel from Ragbagger Press, received the Somerset
Prize for mainstream fiction and numerous accolades in the trade press,
including Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, ForeWord Reviews, BookTrib,
Chanticleer Reviews, and IndieReader. It is currently in development for a
feature film by producer Diane Sillan Isaacs. Michael’s second novel, The Vineyard,
is due to be released by Ragbagger Press in December 2014.
When
he is not writing, Michael enjoys reading and relaxing with Susan on the porch
of their rambling, one-hundred-year-old house.
His fondest pastimes are ocean sailing, playing piano and classical
guitar, cooking, and keeping up with an energetic Irish terrier, Frodo Baggins.
ABOUT THE BOOK
AN EXCERPT
It was a question that would never
have occurred to her mother or to any of her mother’s friends. Of course she
would marry Tripp Wallace, they would say—or wouldn’t say, rather, because the
subject would never come up. But if they were asked, they would be pained to
explain what was self-evident. He met all the necessary criteria. He was from a
well-respected family. He had gone to the right schools, as had his father and
grandfather and great-grandfather before him. He had the right friends who had
gone to the same schools and traveled in the same small circles. He was
accomplished at the right sports—sailing in summer and skiing in winter—and he
knew how to say and do the right things at the right moment in a way that bore
testament, along with his good looks, to an obvious breeding. He was tall and
well-formed and not overly bright or bookish or moody or sensitive. He would
love Dory with fraternal affection and a benign indifference that would
immunize him from the terrible angst that afflicts the lovelorn. There would be
affairs, perhaps, but he could be relied upon to keep them discreet and
meaningless, and there would be no brooding or melancholy or naval gazing in
the wake of their discovery. New love would falter and stumble as it invariably
does, but the business of marriage would march on. There would be no mid-life
forays into the wild unknown, because he was not a curious man. His life had
followed a well-worn path thus far, and he would stick to that path without the
danger of navigational error that comes from needless reflection. He would lead
a good life, not a well-examined life, and thereby make it possible for Dory to
do the same. He and Dory would produce tall, lithe, gorgeous, tow-headed
children and grandchildren who, on their way to fulfilling their central role
as heirs to the family’s fortune and curators of its legacy, would by their
laughter and playfulness banish the awful silence that would otherwise creep
into their marriage, like a pestilence.
© 2014 by M. C. Hurley. All rights
reserved.
Website:
www.mchurley.com
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/mchurleybooks
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