Jeremy T. Wilson

FROM THE COVER: Tuesday night is trivia night, a night for produce market owner Lee Hubbs to swing by the bar with his cop friend, a night to down a few shots and avoid all the folks who’ve mysteriously been turning into quails. It’s a night to kick back and maybe get some action on the side from his employee/girlfriend before heading home to his wife and kids. But this Tuesday’s different. An argument with the girlfriend, a little unintentional vehicular homicide of an unsuspecting cyclist, and the next thing you know, Lee’s life’s upended like a bushel of rotten peaches. Well, mostly upended. Because when you’re a fine upstanding citizen, and your victim is a quail-human ne’er-do-well who won’t be missed by society, who’s to say what’s right, really? Jeremy T. Wilson’s The Quail Who Wears the Shirt is a magnificent Southern-fried meditation on guilt and karma, a fantastic and truly memorable work about the lies we tell ourselves and the truths that seep through despite our best efforts, a darkly comedic satire as strange and surreal as an onion pie. ORDER AT TORTOISE BOOKS

“Jeremy T. Wilson’s witty, dark novel reads like a head-on collision between George Saunders and Erskine Caldwell, and yet is its own totally unique thing. You’ll find Wilson’s surreal vision of Central Georgia sometimes brutal sometimes unexpectedly wise and tender, but always—always—smart, and savagely funny. A terrific book.”

 

— Man Martin, author of The Lemon Jell-O Syndrome and three-time winner of the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Literary Fiction