Howard Denson

The Michelangelo of Marsay Howard Denson

THE MICHELANGELO OF MARSAY is a contemporary novel (3rd person POV; 71,000 words) set in the fictional county of Walden in Northern Alabama. A father and his son in the Marsay community have had drinking problems. The father, Parker Pudley Sr. has been sober for twenty-two years, but he still mourns that his drinking alienated his four daughters so much that they left town and refuse to speak to him, while Little Parker hits bottom because he has driven off his wife Courtney and daughter Wheezy. Big Parker has trouble reaching out to his son, much less to his daughters. Little Parker scorns 12-step meetings and sits on the floor of his empty trailer feeling sorry for himself. With nothing to do and out of beer and whiskey, he watches the only video in the trailer: the story of Michelangelo in "The Agony and the Ecstasy" with Charlton Heston. In between his drunks and sober periods, he decides he should paint on his trailer ceiling, in actual fresco, the scenes of "The Creation of Adam" and the Garden of Eden. To pick up some cash to buy beer and paint, Little Parker ends up riding shotgun for trucker Gray Docker, who calls himself "the Avenging Trucker" because he likes to burn out unoccupied crack houses and meth labs. After a sixteen-year-old Mexican girl hides in his truck to escape prostitution at the remote Mountaintop Store, Docker fixates on this fortress-like complex, which exploits its customers, while acting as a front for a bawdy-house and gambling ring.