Description
Book SynopsisA compelling story of characters enduring various hardships in rural New Mexico. This debut novel tells the story of nine-year-old Raymond, nicknamed “Ray Moon” by Molly, his adoptive caretaker, a waitress, and the former partner of his recently deceased uncle. These two outcasts rely on one another for survival, and their bond forms the heart of this book. Living in a trailer atop a mesa in the high desert of New Mexico in 1968, Raymond ages quickly amid hostile circumstances. With the help of a keen imagination that Molly inspires, he navigates various forms of loss and exploitation amid enduring hardship.
Kevin Honold’s deft and trance-like prose is interspersed with sharp insights and brings attention to the displacement of Native Americans, the hardships of capitalism, the ills of misogyny, and the raw hurt of living a displaced or marginalized life. This is a story of endurance, memory, and unceasing change.
Molly was selected by Dan Chaon as the winner of the 2020 Autumn House Fiction Prize.
Trade Review"There is a particularly satisfying aptness when the beauties of the American Southwest inspire a beautiful book—which
Molly is." * Wall Street Journal *
"Honold, a high school teacher in Santa Fe, paints high-desert landscapes with hallucinatory strokes in this elliptical and wise novella." * New Mexico Magazine *
“
Molly is a wondrously strange and lyrical rural noir, with an almost phantasmagorical vividness in its New Mexico landscape and a tender and heartfelt sympathy for its marginal characters. Honold is a true original.” -- Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will
"Seasoned, somber writing." * Hudson Review *
