Author Steve Yates read from and signed his new novel, The Teeth of the Souls (Moon City Press), Tuesday, April 7, at the Welty Education and Visitors Center (EVC). His presentation was coordinated through the collaboration of the Welty House and Garden and Lemuria Books, who made books available for purchase.
A native of Springfield, Missouri, Yates is the Juniper Prize-winning author of Some Kinds of Love: Stories (University of Massachusetts Press 2013) and of Morkan’s Quarry (Moon City Press 2010). A novella-length portion of The Teeth of the Souls appeared in the Arkansas Review/Kansas Quarterly. Two excerpts appeared in The Missouri Review and one in Elder Mountain Review. Yates is the Assistant Director / Marketing Director at the University Press of Mississippi.
The Teeth of the Souls is a sequel to Morkan’s Quarry and is set just after the Civil War in the Missouri Ozarks. It is the story of marriage, betrayal, and secret love and encompasses reconstruction, vigilantism, and fall from grace. Carefully researched, the book melds Irish, German, Scots-Irish, and African-American cultures.
Author Howard Bahr, says, “Steve Yates’s The Teeth of the Souls is gripping, well-plotted, and frighteningly authentic. Yates shows great courage as a writer who is not afraid to travel into dark places. With each new work, his craftsmanship matures, and he shows himself to be a true Son of the Border. I believe it is time he be acknowledged as one of our premier contemporary historical novelists.”