SECTION ROADS by Mike Murphy ***Spotlight -- Guest Post: Genres -- Giveaway***

Coming of Age / Mystery / Humor

Date Published: June 8, 2019

Publisher: Acorn Publishing

When attorney Cullen Molloy attends his fortieth high school reunion, he doesn’t expect to be defending childhood friends against charges of murder… 

In a small town on the high plains of Eastern New Mexico, life and culture are shaped by the farm roads defining the 640-acre sections of land homesteaders claimed at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Cullen and Shelby Blaine explore first love along these section roads during the 1960’s, forging a life-long emotional bond.

  

      As junior high school band nerds, Cullen and Shelby fall under the protection of football player and loner, Buddy Boyd. During their sophomore year of high school, Buddy is charged with killing a classmate and is confined to a youth correctional facility. When he returns to town facing the prospect of imprisonment as an adult, Cullen becomes Buddy’s protector.

       The case haunts the three friends into adulthood, and it isn’t until their fortieth reunion, that they’re forced to revisit that horrible night. When a new killing takes place, Cullen, Shelby and Buddy find themselves reliving the nightmare.

         Murder is an easy thing to hide along old country section roads.

Advance Praise

“An ambitious, evocative small-town tale located somewhere between Peyton Place and The Last Picture Show.” –Kirkus Review

Read the Full Review

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/mike-murphey/section-roads/

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Guest Post

Genres by Mike Murphy

Publishers, booksellers and readers brand books according to genre so they know what shelf (either literally or figuratively) to put them on. I’m not sure about genre. Section Roads tends to bleed into several areas. Mystery? Well, someone dies, and someone has to figure out who did it. Humor? I certainly hope it’s funny. Romance? Okay, it revolves around romantic relationships although only one or two bodices get ripped. 

At its heart, Section Roads is a coming-of-age novel—a slashed sub-genre: Mystery/coming-of-age? Humor/coming-of-age? 

Some settings are distinctive enough to throw into the mix as well. 

Best as I can define it, Section Roads is a mystery/humor/romance/coming-of-age-New Mexico novel. I’m not sure anyone has a shelf for that. 

It was inspired some fifty years ago by a book called Red Sky at Morning written by New Mexico novelist Richard Bradford. Bradford wrote only one other book. After that, he said his pen ran dry. But with Red Sky, he produced a masterpiece. 

I discovered Red Sky during the summer of 1969. I had graduated from high school a few weeks before and was spending the summer session at New Mexico State University. 

I was captivated by Bradford’s coming-of-age story and its relationship to New Mexico. Bradford’s book took place in a different New Mexico than I knew. His was a setting in Northern New Mexico decorated by mountains, streams and a melded population steeped in the Hispanic culture. 

I grew up in Larry McMurtry’s New Mexico, on the arid high plains called the Llano Estacado, a place which, at that time, did its best to deny the Mexican aspect of our state. I couldn’t wait to escape that little town to find a greener, wetter place. 

Driving from Eastern New Mexico to NMSU, though, I discovered the New Mexico I would come to love—the Hondo Valley, Ruidoso, The Mescalero Apache Reservation, Tularosa, White Sands, over the Organ Mountains and into Las Cruces, a scant forty miles from the Mexican border. 

A couple of high school teachers had encouraged me to think that someday I might become a writer. When I read Red Sky at Morning, I thought to myself if I ever did write, I’d want to create something like this. I was absorbed by Bradford’s book in part because of its incredible sense of place. 

I must admit I wanted my novel’s setting to be the New Mexico I’d found rather than the New Mexico I’d been so anxious to leave behind. Apparently, though, I remain hostage of the little town where I grew up. With each page I wrote, the story kept insisting on that location. Only some three hundred pages later does it meander to Las Cruces. 

Apparently, some stories, like people, have little regard for genre and are shaped by their environment. Some books get to live among tall trees beside flowing streams. Others are stuck on a high plain scoured by wind and populated with tumbleweeds. 

Sometimes, writers tell stories. Sometimes, though, it’s the other way around. 

           

About the Author

Mike Murphey is a native of eastern New Mexico and spent almost thirty years as an award-winning newspaper journalist in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest. Following his retirement from the newspaper business, he and his wife Nancy entered in a seventeen-year partnership with the late Dave Henderson, all-star centerfielder for the Oakland Athletics, Boston Red Sox and Seattle Mariners. Their company produces the A’s and Mariners adult baseball Fantasy Camps. They also have a partnership with the Roy Hobbs adult baseball organization in Fort Myers, Florida. They love baseball, fiction, cats and sailing. They split their time between Spokane, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona. Mike enjoys life as a writer and old-man baseball player.

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