top of page

Debut Novel

McGhee in the Gloaming

ISBN-13-978-0997541502 (Anomie Hollow Press)

​

“We spend the first half of our lives, men like you and me, running from who we are, and the last half running back to it.”—Yannick, from Remember the Sea

​

Fran McGhee is a man haunted by his past and his missed potential. Assembling twenty-four stories, he constructs his own American Ulysses as he jumps through his bittersweet travails, his loves, and losses, in search of purpose and his place in the world. Along the way we meet both the sublime and ridiculous people who have shaped his life as he explores the deepest existential questions, and seeks to make sense of it while leery of that same impulse. A modern protagonist, McGhee speaks for people of our time, confident in their questioning, but shaded by their loss of certainty. 

​

Ironic and beautifully sad, McGhee in the Gloaming is a thoroughly modern engagement with the human condition.

​​

In a modernist approach reminiscent of James Joyce’s Ulysses, McGhee in the Gloaming chronicles the meandering life of the narrator, Fran McGhee. In travels from Alaska to New Orleans, Dublin to Istanbul, he searches for purpose and seeks to exorcise the ghosts from his past, come to terms with his missed potential, and examine the mortal condition itself.

​

Through a series of pivotal episodes, McGhee constructs “the meaningful day” of his life, stitching together the people and events which have defined his trajectory. Together, these moments detail personal loss, death, spiritual grappling, and an emerging understanding of himself that drives him to realize his need to be a writer. Ultimately these stories transcend specific events and locales to reveal timeless truths we all face. 

​

McGhee delves into the deep existential questions that can eat away at us, showing how chance encounters shape the answers that we find. This expansive and imaginative piece is, above all, an epic tale of the ebb and flow that comprises a personal history and defines what it means to be alive. 

Better than I would have expected from Bob....

Former friend of author

 

​

MY BOOKS

Join our mailing list

Never miss an update

bottom of page