Books
A raw, compelling tale of tenacity against the relentless tide of loss, Victory Ruins poses a poignant question: can we remain rooted amidst the tempests of progress?
Chase Steely (Folk Chain of Memory) at the Abbeville Institute
Victory Ruins reads like a classic piece of Southern Literature, and I would not have been surprised at all if someone had told me the book was written in the late 1940s. That is not to say that the writing is antiquated, but that I was completely immersed in a world that was presented so well that I swore the author had intimate knowledge of it. That is no small feat. In other words, this wasn’t a tale to be told, but a life lived and written out.
J.R. Dunmore (Virginia Gentry Magazine)
My first novel, Victory Ruins, was released in 2022. It follows the story of a young man, Arlen Breckenridge, who is called away to a war he never asked for, and yet he goes for the sake of his family and his farm. Across the battlefields of Europe, he walks the thin line between survival and victory, hoping that he will be able to see home again.
But upon his triumphant return, everything about his beloved home has changed. Can he live in the old ways in this new world that victory set against him? Or must he give in to the outside world he and his family resisted for generations?
A new classic in the best traditions of Southern lit, Victory Ruins is a story for us today. When you know what you love, you will give up everything to protect it. But give up yourself? Or the very thing you loved? Victory Ruins is that age-old story of what we become when we give up what we love to save it.