This was my first time reading a book by this author and I am sorry, but I was underwhelmed. This could have worked because a religious cult in an apocalyptic setting sounded interesting but the execution did not work. I was bored reading this.

Cannot recommend. Thanks to NetGalley, Michael Farris Smith and Little Brown and Company for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Already available

Salvage This World is my first experience of Michael Farris Smith’s writing and his picture of the destroyed world of the southern regions of storm ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana. With prose that calls forth ancient gods of the skies and poetic dawns, Smith introduces us to this changing landscape and some of the people trying to survive there while so many others have moved away from the destructive weather.

We meet Jessie and her son Jace, on the run from an unknown but deadly evil. Then her estranged father, Wade. And there is Holt, Jace’s father, who has disappeared. Is this related to his sometime relationship to the Temple of Pain and Glory and the preacher woman Elser who prophesied a girl child savior is coming.

There is violence in the weather as it destroys livelihoods and land, violence in this quasi religious cult, emotional violence in relationships of tired people.

The story is compelling and pulled me on. The writing…well that was just great and I frequently found myself rereading sentences or paragraphs of descriptions to capture the phrasing again. I had thought Michael Farris Smith would be too “noir” for me, but no, he definitely isn’t. While the atmosphere is dark, the writing is excellent and there is genuine humanity lurking where you can find it.

Recommended to all who like Southern lit.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review. Thank you to Little Brown and Company and Michael Farris Smith.

Hardly anyone remains in South Mississippi in the near-future. Storms continuously ravage the coast, and there are barely any crops, jobs, or businesses left. The only people who’ve stayed are those without hope left for a better life. Among those remaining, a religious cult has captivated congregants and begun to spread violence. Jessie and her young son, Jace, are on the run from the cult, and Jace’s father is missing. She seeks refuge at her childhood home where she reluctantly reunites with her father. Rather than finding safety with her father, she has unknowingly brought the violence with her.

Michael Farris Smith captures the mysteries of the south better than almost anyone writing today, and this book kept me awake at night even more than his previous ones. He is an expert at tone, atmosphere, and characters that say an enormous amount with very few words. There are questions left unanswered at the end of the story, but this felt true to the world Smith built. If Faulkner were alive today, he’d own all of Michael Farris Smith’s novels.

I recommend this story to those who love Southern Gothic, religious cults, the deep south, mystery, and dark psychological stories. Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

SALVAGE THIS WORLD. No one is writing southern thrillers with the literary heft of Michael Farris Smith. Gorgeous writing and pages dripping with southern sweat abd tears. Flawed characters navigating a merciless world in which no one is coming to save them. The author treats each character with respect, avoiding stereotypes, and instilling in them a nobility they earn.

I liked the way the chapters shifted back and forth, almost a simultaneous viewing of events. Very clever. I highly recommend this book. A Cormac McCarthy vibe that doesn't require an English doctorate to appreciate.

Despite enjoying fiction with a doomed upcoming dystopia/apocalypse feel, this book wasn’t for me and I ultimately didn’t finish it. The writing style of this author just didn’t get with me, but I’m sure others will love it.

I love this author. His books contain characters who are usually running from danger, violence and often themselves. Scarred individuals living in a challenged world. Climate change, family and religion clash with force in this one. Yet, I felt I needed more information, it felt incomplete to me, too much I didn't understand. There was a lot of violence but I didn't understand exactly what they thought they would find. Or did find behind that locked door. The southern noir grittiness was there, but except for Jace I really felt no strong emotions for the other characters. Could be me. Probably me but on to the next.

A compulsive read exploring family, grief, violence, and the will to survive when hope seems lost. Full review posted at BookBrowse: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr296192

I have loved every book Michael has written. This one was fabulous too! This was a heartfelt mystery about forgiveness and love.

A thrilling adventure from beginning to end! This is the second book by MFS that I've read and enjoyed. And I'm still greatly impressed by his ability to pen a great Southern gothic. Full of creepy suspense as well as gripping family drama, this is one not to be missed. Can't wait for the next adventure! My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book for review. All opinions are my own.

Published by Little, Brown and Company on April 25, 2023

There’s nothing for the people of coastal Mississippi and Louisiana but hurricanes, storms, and floods. No crops. No jobs. No hope. This is the kind of landscape that Michael Farris Smith was born to chronicle.

Jessie’s mother died in childbirth. Her father Wade tells himself he did his best to raise her but he knows he didn’t. He spent too much time in the bottle, too little time trying to overcome his demons, self-pity first among them.

Jessie was not yet eighteen when Holt came into her life. Wade didn’t like Holt but he was powerless to stop Jessie when she jumped into his pickup and left Wade behind. Holt has physical and emotional scars from an abusive childhood but he cares about Jessie and the child they conceive.

Before meeting Jessie, Holt worked for the Temple of Pain and Glory, a tent revival that uses “hellfire and damnation” to camouflage “a more pure theology of greed and dread and lust.” Elser assures her audiences that a young girl with the power to control the weather has been sent by God to save them from hurricanes. Holt stole money and a ring of mysterious keys from the Temple and fled. He only tells Jessie that he is on the run when she is pregnant with his child.

After Holt tells Jessie the truth, he instructs her to grab the keys and run if bad people come. When an unfamiliar car comes up the driveway, that’s what she does, carrying her son Jace into the woods. She steals a car and soon realizes that the foul stench in the back is caused by a decaying corpse. Eventually she makes her way back to Wade because she has nowhere else to go.

The disparate pieces of the plot are adhered by happenstance, but each is a pleasure to read. We eventually learn why there is a body in the car that Jessie steals. The story ends in an ambiguous revelation as the reader gets a horrific glimpse of the secret that the keys unlock. The ambiguity might put off some readers, but the mood and the way characters react to their struggles is more important than understanding why events unfold as they do.

For Wade, Salvage this World is a story of redemption. He is old and alone, but he is given one last chance to set aside his mistakes, salvage the most important part of his life, and be the kind of father or grandfather his family needs, if only for a moment. For Jessie and Holt, the story is largely a fight to survive. They both have opportunities to remake their lives — slender opportunities, given their pasts and the land in which they live — but they must confront the evil that pursues them before they can think about moving ahead.

Smith scatters grit into every sentence. His prose is powerful, stark and evocative. The story’s darkness is echoed in scenes of violence or dread that unfold in tunnels or back woods at night, in religious beliefs that will not withstand the scrutiny of sunshine. Because the novel has few characters, Smith has room to develop themes of alienation and reluctant decency and survival in a hostile land through the backstories of secondary characters. Old men refuse to evacuate during hurricane warnings because a stubborn connection to their place in the world is stronger than their fear that the government might be right about something. Friends feel an obligation to help each other but they would rather not. Poverty and child abuse exist because they are part of a cycle that people are powerless to break.

Smith builds the tension of a thriller into a story of desperate lives. Characters salvage what they can in this novel, both literally and figuratively. For all the darkness, the story offers a glimmer of hope that relationships can be salvaged, that a grandchild born into a stormy world might grow up to have a sunnier life than their parents or grandparents. Still, Smith leaves the impression that they'll need to escape the land of tent revivals if they want to give themselves a chance.

RECOMMENDED

Michael Farris Smith knows how to write Southern-gothic stories set in a dystopian future where climate change has ravaged the Gulf Coast. He delves into the harsh and unforgiving landscape that has shaped the characters and has a way of creating a vivid sense of place by painting a stark and bleak picture. He sets a quiet tone to the story with his beautiful and brutal writing that drew me into the desolate world while capturing the raw emotions and harsh realities of a world that has fallen apart.

Michael Farris Smith raises thought-provoking questions about humanity, morality, and the consequences of our actions while exploring themes of survival and redemption.

What is going on between the pages

Jessie and her son, Jace, are on the run across the Mississippi/Louisiana line, returning to her childhood home and her desolate father, Wade. Jace's father, Holt, is missing and hunted by a dangerous group after taking something he shouldn't have.

My two cents

Jessie and Wade's complex and deeply flawed relationship are at the story's heart while exploring the complex human condition in the face of desperation and fear. They say little to each other, with so much unsaid between them. I could feel their love, and I found myself shouting at them to talk to each other.

There is plenty of human drama, along with the harshness of a crumbling world, but written in a well-paced quiet tone that creates tension and action that had me holding my breath to the last page. While I loved everything about Michael Farris Smith writing, I didn't get that rewarding ending as I didn't quite understand what happened. I am probably overthinking it was meant to symbolize something, and maybe that is something left for us to decide and ponder.

Oh, Momma.........

Don't die with your song still inside you.

And most of us live on the ledge of life never knowing when the slip will come. Our days are numbered and our nights are never guaranteed.

Jessie lived life with unwatched abandon in the swamps lining the Louisiana/Mississippi border. She was a motherless child who knew no gentle hands from her birth onward. Her mother died within the moments of Jessie taking her first breaths. Wade, her hard as nails father, existed on the perimeter. There was no warmth left inside him.

And when Holt showed up at that hamburger joint sitting on the tailgate of his truck, Jessie was smitten. At just seventeen, she grabbed this unexpected golden ring and left her father and his broke down cabin in the rearview mirror. And it would come back to haunt her.

Holt had secrets.
The greatest of all was his involvement with the Temple of Pain and Glory run by Elser, a woman with a spine of knotted wood twisted into acts of otherworldly events. Holt helped to erect the revival meeting tents from town to town. But Holt eventually grew suspicious. Elser took advantage of the steady stupor of poverty. And, holy moly, that was not all. Holt broke in and stole something from Elser.......something that she desperately wanted back.

If you could sit me down in my last days, it would be with a Michael Farris Smith novel. He gets down beneath the surface and brings light to all those unspeakable raw places. The places with no smooth edges and no promise of healing. Smith has a sharp eye for forming characters from the down and out where hope grows thinner by the day. His dialogue depicts individuals who live on the rough side. And he writes what he knows best.......the people of the deep South who do for themselves and face tragedy with even less.

Desperation Road is my favorite of his. It's my hope that you will find him as well.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Little, Brown and Company and to the talented Michael Farris Smith for the opportunity.

Set in the hurricane-ravaged, economically deprived Mississippi-Louisiana border region on the Gulf Coast, this darkly atmospheric novel begins promisingly but ultimately fails to deliver. Three years before the main action, Jessie, a young motherless woman—barely eighteen, ran off with a man a dozen years her senior. Now she has a young son and is in imminent danger. Before meeting Jessie, her partner, Holt, travelled for a while with a sinister revivalist female preacher named Elser. In one derelict southern town after another, Holt’s job was to collect the offerings of the poor who gathered for sermons under the tent. Elser travelled in a black hearse, increasingly in the company of a tall, gray-suited, bespectacled man—a malevolent presence who seemingly appeared out of nowhere. It’s not clear why Holt felt moved to steal the large ring of medieval-looking keys that were given to Elser by her shadowy accomplice, but ever since the theft, he’s been a wanted man. As the novel opens, Holt has been gone for eleven days. Sensing that Elser’s minions are now coming for her, Jessie has no choice but to flee from the remote Louisiana farm (where she’s been hiding with Holt and her child) and return to Wade, the father she ran from a few years before. The story unfolds as a massive hurricane muscles in from the south.

The first half of Smith’s novel is strong and controlled. The author expertly creates tension and a sense of menace. His haunted characters engage the reader and even intrigue. He sets up an interesting problem but proves in the second half of the book that he is not up to the task of providing a clean resolution. This latter section, which largely focuses on Wade’s efforts to help the daughter he loves but feels he failed in the past, reads as though it were written by a different author. The prose becomes careless: the grammar is sloppy; the sentences rambling; the diction imprecise— all of it bloated with excess detail. Holt’s reasons for stealing the keys at all as well as their actual significance are never clarified. The door that the keys unlock could surely have been breached by other means. Even more problematic, however, are the actual nature and purpose of Elser and the gray man’s sinister operations at a site deep in the Mississippi wilds. The novel’s conclusion has some formulaic elements but is otherwise a disappointing, muddled mess. By the time I read it, I was no longer invested in the characters or the story. I simply wanted the book to end.

I’d like to thank Net Galley and the publisher for the free advance copy of the novel. It appears that I’m an outlier, but I really cannot recommend this book.

“She wished that leaving home could have been as simple as being mad at her father. She wished the story was as old is that”.

The beginning….
“She stood bathed in twilight, the dust in her hair and a kid on her hip, and she stared at the approaching storm, as if trying to figure
how to wrangle the thunder head and steer them to a distant and parched land where desperate souls would pay whatever ransom she demanded”.

Jessie knew people were looking for her husband. She knew that there was a
damn good reason that he never returned home. She also knew that she and her child, Jace, could never go back to the house. She knew she would have to keep running.

Jessie and her little boy Jace were shivering cold during the night…running through the woods. And hungry. There were sounds of owls, nightbirds, and other creatures. It was also pitch dark…..but Jessie tried to comfort her son (still in diapers) - telling him things would be all right as she waited for the morning light. Jessie had a pistol with her (for more protection) that she had grabbed from her secret hiding place at home just before she ran out of the house.

“She picked up a rock and threw it, and then another and another, finally crying out in disgust with not just today and yesterday, but crying out against the years that had led her to now. All the steps she had taken to arrive on this empty road in the middle of nowhere with her small son asleep, and a stolen car and a dead thing wrapped in a garbage bag in the hatch and she screamed out into the void, and when she had screamed herself out of breath, she turned and saw Jace’s face in the window. Awakened by his mother. His nose and palms pressed against the glass”.

“Home” …. the toddler said.
I found it so sad to hear little Jace say (repeat) “Home” to his mom.
Jessie was thinking….
“I don’t know where that is, she thought. I don’t know which direction. I don’t know what to do. And then he said it again, and pressed her cheeks harder with his little hands”.
“Home”.

“She squeezed him. Walked down the road, holding him, singing bits and pieces of songs. Fragments of lullabies and a half a verse of Amazing Grace, and ending with both of them quacking like ducks. They sang and walked and she kept looking back at the hatchback, as if hoping it had sunk into the earth, or maybe never existed at all”.

Wade was lying on the couch.
He was watching television and listening to his mother and smaller sister, laughing in the other room. It was one of the last days they would all be together before his mother took his sister and ran away, leaving Wade with his father…..
…..”for reasons he both understood and never would”.

Forty years had passed. Wade “imagined the voice of God saying I created you and I can destroy you and don’t you ever forget it”.

It was raining….
cracks of lightning and thunderclaps lessening in volume…. clouds and streaks of sunshine — and a rich blue sky were a-coming soon…
Wade was just hanging on the couch — wanting a cigarette. The phone rang… a surprise… as it seldom did.
“Daddy?”….
Jessie, his daughter was on the phone.
“I need to come home”.
I’m saying no more….
[being a girl girl for a change]…..

Other than to say ….
….the setting takes place in Mississippi—crossed from Louisiana—(with MFS-signature
atmospheric experiences of the elements)….
And gripping page turning storytelling with characters to root for: Jessie, Jace, and Wade.
As for Holt, (father of Jace)….shhhh > lets not say his name again.

….I’ve read six of Michael Farris Smith’s ‘other’ books —
…Nick
…Blackwood
…The Fighter
…Desperation Road
…Rivers
…The Hands of Stranger
….yes, I’m a big time fan of his work!!!!
And….
…*Savage This World*
is one of his best in the stack!
….the underline - but always felt tenderness was warmth in my heart — in ways cracks of violence from lightning striking - and other violent wasn’t.

To miss reading Michael Farris Smith (MFS) would be like never seeing the ocean, or never having walked through the enchanting forests….

Kudos Michael — another great novel!!!!
Really a GEM!!! Very engrossing!!!

No one writes desperation like Michael Farris Smith.

South Mississippi has been ravaged by Hurricanes, crops are failing, people are moving and those that remain cling to hope while desperately trying to survive their day to day lives. It is also where a religious zealot has taken hold. She gives dynamic and bizarre sermons telling of a female child who will save them....

South Mississippi is where Jesse and her young son have returned to her childhood home. Jesse is desperate and in need of help. She has not spoken to her father, Wade since she left with Holt, Jace's father years ago. Wade doesn't know much about Jesse's life since she left, but he knows desperation and need.

In a few days, everything has changed and with a Hurricane looming, things are going to get dark, dangerous, and deadly.

Wowza! Michael Farris Smith has delivered yet again. I love his writing and description. He has his finger on the pulse of people who have their backs against the wall, who have nothing left to lose and have nothing left to give. He writes human emotion beautifully. His writing it elegant and beautiful. I also enjoy how he uses the elements and landscape to also depict the desperation and bleakness in which his characters live. Life is tough, they will need to be tougher.

I love how I am absorbed into the world Michael Farris Smith creates and being taken on the journey along with his characters. This is southern noir/grit/gothic at its best. This isn't an easy tale, but it is beautifully told.

4.5 stars

#SalvageThisWorld #NetGalley #MichaelFarrisSmith

I didn’t love Farris’ when I first read him. Rivers didn’t impress much. But his subsequent works did. A lot. So now I’m a fan. I request his new ARCs from Netgalley without even reading much of the plot summary. And yet this one disappointed.
It was very on brand for the author. The same sort of language and all, but this Southern Neo-Noir just didn’t land quite right with me.
Farris does a great job with place as character, bringing to life the sinking south, specifically the Louisiana/Mississippi border, in vivid detail. But that is also the thing that sinks the narrative. Pardon the pun.
The overwhelming amount of minute details is just enough for other characters to get lost in. Same with the plot. Or rather there isn’t enough plot here beneath all the precision-chosen words.
Estranged father and daughter are reunited a few years after she took off with a much older man. Now, she is fleeing a danger the man brought into her life, the sort of thing where people get caught in crosshairs and die.
The characters are interesting and realistic, but there’s such a disjointed quality to the narrative, it’s difficult to follow their individual stories. Kinda muddled, kinda messy. Not quite up to Farris’ standards. Stylish sure, stylistic even, but ultimately leaves you wanting.
Still a good read, if only for the language and Oron. That dude was awesome, so much so, I’m going to round up my rating of the book. But not author’s best. User mileage may vary. Thanks Netgalley.

Another terrific story from Farris Smith centering around a woman, Jessie, who's on the run with her son Jace after bad people come looking for her partner Holt, who got involved with the wrong people, including a religious zealot. She's forced to turn to her dad, Wade, who she hasn't seen in several years after running away with Holt against Wade's wishes. Farris Smith does Southern noir as good as anyone, and this one's no exception. Solid characters, growing tension and a violent but satisfactory ending give this one a nice edge. 4-4.5 stars. Highly recommended. Thanks to Netgalley for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This story begins with an aura of quiet desperation. Set in the southern part of Mississippi near Louisiana, A young mother, Jessie, her young son Jace are outside. His father, Holt, has not returned. Holt works for Elser, the minister of a traveling revival show called ’The Temple of Pain and Glory.

There is a hurricane on the horizon. But the hurricane isn’t the only danger that she and her son face. When Jace points to the lights, Jessie realizes that the lights he is pointing to are not from the lightning, but headlights. She rushes inside to grab the pistol kept under the mattress and then the keys, and putting Jace on her hip, she runs. The sounds of shotgun blasts continue to follow her and she realizes that she can never return, never stop running. There’s only one place for her to go, home, to her father, even though she hasn’t been in contact with him since before Jace was born.

Perhaps the years that passed have softened him, or her, and while her return isn’t exactly filled with hugs and greetings welcoming her home, both seem to want to let the grievances from the past remain in the past.

This story slowly reveals the parts of each of their lives that have led them to this point, and there is a twist that follows, one which adds to the tension of this southern noir story.

If you’ve ever read anything by Michael Farris Smith, you already know all that you need to know. MFS writes like no other.


Pub Date: 25 Apr 2023

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Little, Brown and Company

I really enjoy reading this book. I could not put it down!!! It was very interesting. I didn’t think I would like it as much as I did. It was very well written.

Jessie and Jace faced an uncertain future even before husband and father Holt took off days before the weather took a hard turn; she had to run through the nearby woods carrying the baby in one arm and a set of precious keys in her pocket, keys that the men with the shotguns would do anything to get. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and that pretty well sets the tone for Michael Farris Smith’s latest rendition. Most of his novels have an undertone of raw despair to them. You don’t really know what you would do until your back is against the wall, per se, and Salvage the World is no exception. All of the players here are as prosperous as a dust bowl farmer, and as such, are tethered to a land wasted by lost dreams, bad management, and worse weather. Smith takes you every step with them to see how it plays out, because anything can happen. You’re gonna love this one.