Merle Drown
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Merle Drown
A native of Northern New England, I have written stories, essays, plays, reviews, and three novels, Lighting the World (Whitepoint Press, 2015), Plowing Up A Snake (The Dial Press) and The Suburbs Of Heaven (Soho Press, 2000), trade paperback (Berkley Press, 2001). I edited Meteor in the Madhouse, the posthumous novellas of Leon Forrest, published by Northwestern University Press in 2001. 
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From Whitepoint Press

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A poignant tale about an ordinary boy whose good heart and strong spirit lead to tragedy. 

Wade Rule reveals to his classmate Maria that he plans to run off to Vermont to escape his domineering mother. When Maria tells him that she'd rather run off than live with her father, Wade makes up his mind to take Maria along. But when he shows up at school with a shotgun to fetch her, things go horribly wrong.



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Lighting The World

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Advanced Praise for Lighting the World

“Like a good Greek tragedy the story moves swiftly and deadly… its style is both terse and greatly evocative…this is a wonderful work of art.”  — John G. Cawelti, Emeritus Professor of University of Kentucky and author of  The Six Gun Mystique

  “Grounded in the cold, hard realism of tragedy, the writing is as beautiful and whimsical as the fantasies that compel young Wade Rule to pick up his shotgun and head to his high school… Merle Drown is a writer of incredible compassion, and Lighting the World… reflects how little we understand about the troubled and tortured souls who live among us.”
–Wiley Cash, New York Times best-selling author of A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy

“Intriguing, heartfelt and insightful, Lighting the World is a rich and complex novel filled with fascinating characters and genuine moments of surprise.” –John Searles, best-selling author of Help for the Haunted and Strange But True

[Lighting the World] reflects the dark side of Catcher in the Rye. I am greatly impressed with [Merle Drown’s] ability to capture the mind and heart of the adolescent experience.” –Phil Goldfarb, Motion Picture and Television Producer
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Press Attention


Bartleby Snopes Writing Blog "Lighting the Literary World with Merle Drown"-5/27/2015

Globe News Wire-"Lost in the System"
4/29/15

New Hampshire Writers Project-"Merle Drown Lighting the World" 4/14/15

Concord Monitor
-"Sometimes Fiction and Truth are Both Equally Strange" 4/12/15

Concord Monitor-"30 Years Ago a CHS Student Took Hostages and was Killed by the Police" 4/12/15

Flash Fiction

Featuring fiction by Merle Drown in bite-sized doses. Previously published stories from a work-in-progress Shrunken Heads, Miniature Portraits of the Famous Among Us...  Click here...

Why I Write

Telling stories is my birthright.

I grew up in a 1950s New Hampshire mill town, where truth came in tales from parents, neighbors, church parables, radios shows, and the constant talk, gossip and lies, secrets and revelations, whispers that should have been shouts, shouts that should have been whispers.

We hunted truth and wisdom with stories the way scientists used test tubes and microscopes, math and theories.  We found the universal in the particular. Our philosophies were based on everyday observations. Life didn’t come with a rule book, and those who told us it did were deluded or liars. Life came with tears and laughter, pleasure and pain. Click here to read more...

What I Write

My writing focuses on ordinary people who by insisting on the primacy of their own visions and the value of their souls become extraordinary.  Many of my characters are poor people, struggling to grasp dignity and hold onto their hearts’ treasure.  
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The Suburbs of Heaven

Jim Hutchins is having a bad day. His wife Pauline is having a strange erotic relationship with his dead sister's husband. His three grown children are out of control, the IRS is after him, and he may lose the trailer he's been living in since his house burned down. Is it any wonder that he's headed toward his brother-in-law's with a twelve-gauge shotgun in his hand?
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Plowing Up A Snake

Based on an actual murder, this novel tells the story of the psychological and emotional consequences of a vengeful murder in a small dairy town in New Hampshire.
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Copyright Merle Drown 2015. Any use without author's consent is strictly prohibited.