Crowsong for the Stricken

by Ted Morrissey

Crowsong for the Stricken is a prismatic novel consisting of twelve pieces orbiting the uncanny events in an isolated Midwestern village. Are the events the work of the divine or the demonic? Is there a more human explanation? The answer may depend on the order in which one encounters the various pieces. Among them is the award-winning title story, which was published in an illustrated edition by Flyleaf Journal. Central to the book is the crowlike figure of Plague, who haunts the villagers, especially the children. More than anything, though, it is a village of secrets—secrets that people keep from each other . . . and secrets they keep from themselves. The novel is a prime example of the burgeoning literary style known as Midwestern Gothic. Pieces from the novel have appeared in numerous journals, including Southern Humanities Review, the Tulane Review, ink&coda, Constellations, as well as the anthology Literature Today.

226 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 6, 2017

About the author

Ted Morrissey is the author of two books of scholarship and five books of fiction—Crowsong for the Stricken, Weeping with an Ancient God, An Untimely Frost, Figures in Blue, and Men of Winter. Chicago Book Review listed Weeping with an Ancient God as a Best Book of 2015. His stories and novel excerpts have appeared in more than fifty journals, among them Glimmer Train, ink&coda, and Southern Humanities Review. His novel Mrs Saville has been serially published at Strands Lit Sphere. In addition to teaching high school English, he also teaches in the MFA in Writing program (online) for Lindenwood University. He and his wife Melissa, an educator and children’s author, have five children and two rescue dogs. Ted is also the founding publisher of Twelve Winters Press, which he based on Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press.