Phillip Gardner

Someone to Crawl Back to Phillip Gardner

SOMEONE TO CRAWL BACK TO is a novel-in-stories, a collection of hearts in search of what they¿ve always wanted or what they¿ve eternally lost. Set in small town South Carolina, those hearts belong to wrecker drivers, drive-thru fast food workers, college professors, bartenders, insurance and mobile homes salesmen. Their common ground is The Paradise Lounge. The death of a marriage, Joshua and Rene Serverance¿s, forms the spine of the book, but included in this small community of seekers are George Scarborough and his softball-playing wife; Evander Baker, who helps his sister bury a bag of chocolate chip cookies near the septic line; and Warren Oxendine, whose wife buys a vibrator at a yard sale. Structured more like a Robert Altman film than a traditional novel, reading SOMEONE TO CRAWL BACK TO is like going to The Paradise Lounge for a drink, slipping inside a patron¿s skin, going home with that person, then coming back to The Paradise and leaving with another sojourner of love.