A Thousand Miles from Nowhere - Hardcover

Born and raised in New Orleans, John Gregory Brown is the author of the novels Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery; The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur; and Audubon's Watch. For two decades he has taught and directed the creative writing program at Sweet Briar College, in Virginia, where he serves as the Julia Jackson Nichols Professor of English. He and his wife, the novelist Carrie Brown, have three children.

"Grace is the main course special here. It comes with a serving of greatness and a side of grit, with all the essential condiments: wit, soul, and heart. A new kind of road novel for a new South: Brown is a storyteller I'd follow anywhere."―Elisa Albert, author of After Birth

"This is a deeply humane look at the vulnerability of black lives, the changing contours of the New South and the restorative potential of literature in the aftermath of catastrophe."--New York Times Book Review

"John Gregory Brown is a writer I've long admired, and this new novel is his best book yet. A Thousand Miles from Nowhere is a marvelous depiction of one man's stumbling journey from despair toward a hard-won redemption."--Ron Rash

"A soulful musing on art, love and sanity, and on art's power to redeem. A beautiful, haunting novel."--Tom Franklin, bestselling author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

"Writing in rowdy, beautiful prose like some latter-day combination of Walker Percy and Gram Parsons, like some kind of grievous angel himself, John Gregory Brown blends his repeated themes of loss, longing, accident, catastrophe and psychosis into the most original and moving novel you cannot even imagine---a novel much more like a jazz suite than a book. Each memorable character gets his own solo, riffs which combine into a surprising and dazzling finale for this memorable work of art."-Lee Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Girls

"Populated by likable and believable characters, an affectionate, understated approach to questions of sanity, survival, and redemption."-Kirkus

"A Thousand Miles from Nowhere is a charming portrait of how redemption can appear in the most unlikely circumstances."--Shelf Awareness

"Brown has a deft way of writing about loss and redemption, at once physical and immediate. The result is palpable, and the relief as Henry once more finds his narrative--the thread that holds his story together--is profound."--Boston Globe

"A book of profound grace and consolation."--New Orleans Advocate


Praise for Audubon's Watch

"Brown's ambition and achievement in Audubon's Watch lie in the sensual effects of his ornate, overripe language... It's a brazen performance that few authors would have the skill or courage to risk."
"It is a rare sensation to encounter an American novel so concerned with the beauty of language and focused on the moral topography of love; these concerns give Audubon's Watch its fundamental strength."
―Chicago Tribune


"John Gregory Brown is an engaging, highly readable, and compassionate storyteller. Now he proves himself a masterly architect of plot, narrative, and theme in Audubon's Watch... Breathtaking, compelling, and infinitely rewarding."
―Arkansas Democrat-Gazette