FICTION | AVAILABLE NOW
INHABITED
A Novel
by CHARLIE QUIMBY
“An intriguing examination of people and a place in transition.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
Cover art by Gayle Gerson
Meg Mogrin sells pricey houses, belongs to the mayor's inner circle, and knows more than she's letting on about her sister's death. Isaac Samson lives in a tent and believes Thomas Edison invented the Reagan presidency. When their town attracts a game-changing development, Isaac is displaced by the town's crackdown on vagrancy. As Isaac struggles to regain stability, Meg contends with conflicting roles of assisting the developer while serving on the homeless coalition. Isaac's quest to return a lost artifact soon intrudes into Meg's tidy world, digging up a part of her past she'd rather remained buried.
October 2016 | Fiction | 978-1-937226-67-1 | 365 pp | $16.95
“A dramatic, honest, humane portrait of a Colorado city in the throes of great change and great choice. A vivid, compelling story delivered with 21st-century true grit.”
—ALYSON HAGY, author of Boleto
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHARLIE QUIMBY’s debut novel, Monument Road, was an Indie Next pick, a Booklist Editors’ Choice 2013 and a Reading the West finalist. Before turning to fiction, he was an award-winning writer and marketing agency owner who co-authored Planning to Stay, a guide for how residents can shape development in their communities. His nonfiction has appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, High Country News, and the Harvard Business Review, and two of his plays have been produced. A native Coloradan and adopted Minnesotan, he makes home in both places and tells stories about homelessness in his blog at charliequimby.com.
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
MONUMENT ROAD: A Novel
Leonard Self has spent a year unwinding his ranch, paying down debts and fending off the darkening. Just one commitment left: taking his wife’s ashes to her favorite overlook, where he plans to step off the cliff with her. Memories and encounters along the familiar road seem like obstacles—or they may be signs it’s not his final drive after all.
"Monument Road is beautiful and real, full of landscape imagery of the American Southwest as a poignant and sometimes haunting metaphor of our connections to the land."
—15 BYTES
PRAISE FOR INHABITED
"Inhabited spotlights the complex forces behind the spaces we call home."
—MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
"The lives of Quimby’s finely drawn characters interweave to produce a panorama as wide and full of light as the near-desert setting. Even his minor figures add significantly to the whole, and his skillful and delightful turns of phrase make reading this evocative novel a pleasure."
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review
"An outstanding novel with memorable, believable characters who deal simultaneously with the challenges of reclaiming and redeeming themselves as well as the landscapes that define their communities."
—THE UTAH REVIEW
"Quimby’s experiences as a Colorado native and an advocate for the homeless provide the novel’s backbone, but its real strength is in its cast of vivid, relatable individuals. Recommend to readers attuned to Kent Haruf, Annie Proulx, Laura Pritchett, and Bonnie Nadzam."
“An intriguing examination of people and a place in transition.”
“I was staggered by the authenticity of these people and their dilemmas.”
—FAITH SULLIVAN, author of Goodnight, Mr. Wodehouse
“A thoroughly enjoyable novel that masterfully takes the reader on an emotionally rewarding exploration of ‘home’ and the power the concept has on
the human psyche.”
—JONATHAN ODELL, author of Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League
“A dramatic, honest, humane portrait of a Colorado city in the throes of great change and great choice. A vivid, compelling story delivered with 21st-century true grit.”
—ALYSON HAGY, author of Boleto
"A layered drama about our responsibilities to each other and the blunders and scars we must endure. I salute Charlie Quimby for following the path of Steinbeck and Orwell in writing empathetic portraits of the ignored and the shunned.”
—JIM LYNCH, author of Before the Wind
