We Shall Not All Sleep
250 pages
October 29, 2024
COMING SOON! In a small North Carolina riverside town where past and present are mysteriously entangled, young Daniel Waterson is growing up in the towering presence of his father Ray, a decorated Vietnam veteran whose mystical powers extend far beyond those of a trained soldier. Their lives are irrevocably altered when Ray accidentally kills a […]
| Hardcover | ISBN 9781639821754 | $38.00 |
| Paperback | ISBN 9781639821747 | $22.00 |
| eBook | ISBN 9781639821761 | $12.99 |
COMING SOON! In a small North Carolina riverside town where past and present are mysteriously entangled, young Daniel Waterson is growing up in the towering presence of his father Ray, a decorated Vietnam veteran whose mystical powers extend far beyond those of a trained soldier. Their lives are irrevocably altered when Ray accidentally kills a local boy, plunging their community into a maelstrom of sorrow and recrimination.
As Daniel struggles to reconcile the hero he admires with the flawed man before him, he finds himself haunted not just by the weight of the accident, but by the revenant of the boy whose life was so abruptly ended. Daniel is drawn into a world where lines between living and dead blur, and secrets rise to the surface as a community’s violent past threatens to spill over into its present.
On his journey Daniel is sustained by his fierce and loving grandmother, his best friend, and most of all his mother Lee Ann, who is determined to keep him from tapping into the power and curse that courses through his father’s veins. Eventually Daniel must face the choice confronting every man: Will I follow my father’s path?
We Shall Not All Sleep is a captivating coming-of-age story woven with danger, mystery, and the bonds between father and son, husband and wife, and faithful friends. It is a haunting tale of a quest, enduring love, and the price of redemption.
What Others Are Saying
We Shall Not All Sleep is an emotionally charged, beautifully written portrait of a father and son’s deep love for each other, and of the guilt and hauntings, both real and imagined, that threaten and challenge them. It’s very thoughtful and very fine.
Ron Hansen, author of Mariette in Ecstasy
Tony Woodlief has written an incantatory novel that seeps into your heart and will not let you go. We Shall Not All Sleep asks essential questions. When the present and past break you, when hauntings won’t release you, when mysteriously dark forces whisper in the wind, what do you do? The novel’s answer will shake you to your core, will make you wiser, will inspire you to believe in the power of love again, and will—as all great books do—change you. These characters and their lives—so human, so flawed, so beautiful—will stay with you long after the final page is turned.
Connie May Fowler, Author of Before Women had Wings
Tony Woodlief’s work is the unvarnished, resolute, hardwood prose of a man who writes with a determined honesty—as if he is staking ground in a battle; as if God is staring him in the face and he dare write nothing less. To read him is as bracing as it is rewarding.
A.G. Harmon, author of A House All Stilled
