Gathering Volumes Takes on LaDene Faye Howell in Perrysburg, Ohio

Join Gathering Volumes Bookstore and author Anesa Miller for a discussion and signing, helping launch her brand new novel I Never Do This on May 19th, 2024 at 2:30pm. 

More event information can be found here.

EVENT LOCATION: 
Gathering Volumes
196 East South Boundary
Perrysburg, OH
USA 43551

About I Never Do This by Anesa Miller:

This Rust Belt gothic novel presents the unforgettable voice of a young woman, LaDene Faye Howell, who finds herself in police custody recounting her story after her paroled cousin Bobbie Frank appears and engages her in a crime spree.

LaDene Faye Howell has spent her life in the small town of Devola, on an oxbow of the Muskingum River, in southeast Ohio. Her family is conservative and deeply religious, although another branch of the Howell clan are notorious criminals. When one of her outlaw relatives returns from prison, LaDene hopes the two of them may share an evening of fun, or even a spark of romance. Instead, Bobby Frank embroils her in kidnapping their old high school principal.

Taken into custody, LaDene recounts her misadventures in the form of a dramatic monologue. Pledging to “tell all in full truth so help me God,” she hopes to keep herself out of jail and perhaps even soften Bobby’s likely sentence. She aims to capture her listeners’ sympathy by recounting a history she has never shared before: her teenage pregnancy and confinement at an unforgiving evangelical facility for wayward girls.

The heart of the story is LaDene’s struggle to live as her own person while remaining true to her heritage and family loyalties. With country noir flair, it touches on spiritual abuse, addiction, family entanglements, and the disenfranchisement of women and young people in fundamentalist settings.

About Author Anesa Miller:

Anesa Miller is a native of Wichita, Kansas, a graduate of the University of Idaho, a long-term resident of Ohio, and recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Fellowship for creative writing. Her fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared widely, and her previous novel, Our Orbit, was a finalist in regional fiction in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

This event kicks of the LaDene Faye Howell Takes On Ohio Book Tour!

Let’s celebrate the birth of a new Ohio heroine, LaDene Faye Howell, whose singular voice is heard during her confession in the police lock-up of the small town of Marietta, Ohio, located on an oxbow of the Muskingum River. As the star of I Never Do This: A Novel, this native daughter has lots to say after years of keeping quiet and a unique way of telling it too. The novel is a tribute to our younger generation, now in their 20s, and the yearning for a life that includes love and just a little understanding.

A resident of Bowling Green, author Anesa Miller is a past recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Fellowship for creative writing. Sibylline Press, the publisher of the brilliant work of women authors over 50, is booking events for her in the month of April and May in Ohio. At these events, you’ll hear LaDene firsthand when Anesa brings her to life. Let’s do this Ohio!

More stops on the tour can be found here.

“…a masterful novel, inhabited by a voice so fearless and compassionate, urgent and heartland-true, that its music and message stay with you long, long after the final page. Indeed, I Never Do This is one of those rare books that makes you want to read it all over again, so compelling and beautifully limned are the characters.” —Brandon R. Schrand, Author of The Enders Hotel: A Memoir