Zak Jones
In conversation with Conor Kerr
Thursday, October 29 | 7 PM
Forsyth Hall, Downtown Library | $10
Fancy Gap:
Fancy Gap follows three estranged generations of an Appalachian family as they confront poverty, illness, addiction, and religious extremism.
Their intertwined struggles build toward a devastating climax that forces them together in a story of loss, faith, and survival.
"In god's name, Amen. Zak Jones has created his own backwoods revival with Fancy Gap. Here is a novel that clicks along like an empty cartridge on a stolen military pistol, a story that alternates between the calm energy of an oxy-induced stupor and the frantic fire of methamphetamine. Jones brings us right onto the bench seat of a truck hell-bent for glory on the Blue Ridge Parkway. But no one can hear the angels sing when survival is all you can pray for and the definition of family gets blurred by opioids and then drowned in a carcinogenic river along with the American dream."
—Conor Kerr, award-winning author of Prairie Edge and Avenue of Champions
About Zak Jones
Zak Jones is a writer, literary scholar and US Army Veteran. A dual Canadian- American citizen, he grew up between rural North Carolina and Toronto.
His short story, So Much More to Say, won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s 2023 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, and his story, Love Handles, won the 2023 Norma Epstein National Award. Zak holds an MA in English Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Toronto, where he is currently a Ph.D. candidate studying veterans’ narratives in American Literature.
Fancy Gap
A powerful, unforgettable debut: three estranged generations in Appalachia grapple with loss, poverty, and their individual demons, until an explosive climax brings them together in apocalyptic deliverance.
In the hills and isolated mountain enclaves of southern Appalachia, Nana Grace has left her own family behind to become the “Shepherd” of a disaffected flock of worshippers that she keeps in thrall through her charismatic preaching and the dispensing of stolen drugs.
Her daughter, Jane, struggles with breast cancer, the painful effects of its treatment, and the expectation to perform unceasing gratitude toward the evangelical community that reluctantly supports her out of a transactional sense of duty.
Jane's eldest son, Dalton, has been discharged from the army under conditions "Other than Honorable." Accused of breaching the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, Dalton drifts hesitantly home, pulled by guilt and love for his younger brother. Messy (christened Messiah at Grace’s insistence) is awkward in a world that attacks difference. Guided by faith, tortured by abandonment, Messy eventually develops a warped moral code shaped by alienation and anger.
Fancy Gap is an unflinching look at the desperation that throws kerosene on the flames of opioid use, poverty, illness, and apocalyptic Christianity. Profound and captivating, violent and lyrical, it introduces Zak Jones as a compelling and original new voice in Canadian literature.
Conor Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian writer and bird hunter living in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton), born in Saskatoon, and raised in Buffalo Pound Lake and Drayton Valley. He is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta. His Ukrainian family are settlers on Treaty 4 Territory. Conor is the author of the novels Avenue of Champions and Prairie Edge which won the Crime Writers of Canada Best Novel award; as well as the poetry collections An Explosion of Feathers and Old Gods. His latest book is the poetic novella, Beaver Hills Forever.
