In the new Republic of Texas, guns are compulsory and nothing is forgiven. Blue Running is a gripping coming-of-age thriller set in post-secessionist Texas. For fans of Station Eleven and Thelma and Louise. Fourteen-year-old Bluebonnet Andrews is on the run across the Republic of Texas. An accident with a gun killed her best friend but everyone in the town of Blessing thinks it was murder. Even her father - the town's drunken deputy - believes she did it. Now, she has no choice but to run. In Texas, murder is punishable by death. There's no one to help her. Her father is incapable and her mother left the state on the last flight to America before the secession. Blue doesn't know where she is but she's determined to track her down. First she has to get across the lawless Republic and over the wall that keeps everyone in. On the road she meets Jet, a pregnant young woman of Latin American heritage. Jet is secretive about her past but she's just as determined as Blue to get out of Texas before she's caught and arrested. Together, the two form an unlikely kinship as they make their way past marauding motorcycle gangs, the ever watchful Texas Rangers, and armed strangers intent on abducting them - or worse. When Blue and Jet finally reach the wall, will they be able to cross the border, or will they be shot down in cold blood like the thousands who have gone before them? Some things are worth dying for.

In the new Republic of Texas, guns are compulsory and nothing is forgiven. Blue Running is a gripping coming-of-age thriller set in post-secessionist Texas. For fans of Station Eleven and Thelma and Louise. Fourteen-year-old Bluebonnet Andrews is on the run across the Republic of Texas. An accident with a gun killed her best friend but everyone in the town of Blessing thinks it was murder. Even her father - the town's drunken deputy - believes she did it. Now, she has no choice but to run. In Texas, murder is punishable by death. There's no one to help her. Her father is incapable and her mother left the state on the last flight to America before the secession. Blue doesn't know where she is but she's determined to track her down. First she has to get across the lawless Republic and over the wall that keeps everyone in. On the road she meets Jet, a pregnant young woman of Latin American heritage. Jet is secretive about her past but she's just as determined as Blue to get out of Texas before she's caught and arrested. Together, the two form an unlikely kinship as they make their way past marauding motorcycle gangs, the ever watchful Texas Rangers, and armed strangers intent on abducting them - or worse. When Blue and Jet finally reach the wall, will they be able to cross the border, or will they be shot down in cold blood like the thousands who have gone before them? Some things are worth dying for.

This brief book focuses on the Gothic elements that help to shape and define literature of the American South and on how these elements are incorporated into Southern literature through overt use of the grotesque. After exploring the foundations of what may be loosely termed the Southern Grotesque, this work analyzes two literary themes that have played major roles in the evolution of Southern fiction, which often centers on women and the roles they play in Southern society: coming-of-age themes and motherhood themes. Coming-of-age themes trace the lives of adolescent girls who grow up in Southern culture, come of age spiritually in the South, and search for identity, while motherhood themes track the influence (both productive and destructive) of Southern women who are thrust into motherhood. This book also examines the Grotesque and Gothic connections among the authors of Southern literature, in particular Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Flannery OConnor, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison. These writers of the grotesque tradition have influenced my own novel-writing, to which I refer in the last chapter, a study of the creative process.