A-Z Indie Books: Up So Down

Today's featured book is Up So Down by our own Briane Pagel:

When "Bumpy" takes his sister's fiance out for a night on the town, a mysterious drowning crashes through their lives like a wrecking ball into an already-crumbling wall. Sarah mourns her lost lover by halfheartedly joining a group dedicated to proving there is a serial killer on the loose and jealously guarding her dying mother, while "Bumpy" moves to Las Vegas to take up a new career, only to accidentally stumble into his old one.

Through the course of a year that unfolds haphazardly and out-of-sequence, Bumpy and Sarah try to figure out how much of the past they ought to hold on to, and how much of the future is worth looking into.

Comments:  This was nearly as good as The After, my favorite Briane Pagel novel.  I was reminded of Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons, a novel that followed two pretty ordinary people and yet somehow made even the relatively mundane bits of their lives seem interesting.  Bumpy and Sarah are a little less ordinary than those characters, but they aren't exactly superheroes or mystery-solving physicist-rock guitar players either.  But like that book, what makes this great is how even the relative mundane seems exceptional.

Right now you can get it FREE on Amazon!