Charleston, SC, September 1 – Local writer F. Rutledge
Hammes is set to release his debut novel, A
Curious Matter of Men with Wings. So far, his book has received glowing
praise from writers like New York Times
bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank who writes, “F. Rutledge Hammes is
that rare new voice you run across once or maybe twice in a lifetime. His
spectacular debut novel, A Curious Matter
of Men with Wings soars! It is a coming of age cautionary tale about
power. It’s a mystery and a love story wrapped up in humidity and
pluff mud and it is as fascinating as it is addicting.”
Sue Monk Kidd, bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees, writes, “A Curious Matter of Men with
Wings is where magic comes to life in a bold story that celebrates the
Gullah world of the South Carolina sea islands. With lyrical prose, the novel
takes us into a hidden realm where life is still enchanted and storytelling
abounds. In these pages, the transfixing Walpole family grapples with loss, the
madness of grief, and ultimately healing, while surrounded by a community whose
only salvation lies in the ties that bind them.”
Set for release on September 25 by Atlanta-based SFK Press,
Hammes’ debut novel tells the story of the Walpole family who fled their sorted
past and escaped to one of the nearly 2000 uninhabited Sea Islands off the
Carolina coast. The novel opens with the two Walpole boys taking their little
sister out on their johnboat for the first time to pirate the waterways for
beer and loose change. In the process, their little sister goes overboard and
appears to have drowned, until two men with gigantic wings swoop down and carry
her body away into the sky. The news of her disappearance hits the family
particularly hard, and the mother goes so far as to fashion herself wings and
tries to fly. The Walpole boys set off in search of their little sister and, in
the process, discover the truth behind the centuries-old Gullah tale of the
Flying Men as well as numerous other mysteries native to the South Carolina Sea
Islands.
Hammes himself was born here in the Lowcountry, where he fell
in love with the waterways, the people and the folklore that inhabit the Sea
Islands. His whole life, he has been writing about the Charleston area and Sea
Island culture, and for the past decade, he has been teaching those young
writers who will keep our lush storytelling tradition alive.
Having grown up the oldest in a family of
ten, stories of family come naturally to him. His grandparents moved out to the
Sea Islands early in their marriage and made friends in the Gullah community,
and so he grew up enamored by all the stories and folklore he was told as a
child. Hammes says, “He has long believed that magic is at the heart of
Charleston, SC, and so magic must be at the heart of the Charleston novel.”
Through A Curious Matter of Men with Wings, Hammes hopes
readers will see the redemption that comes to people who keep their promises to
one another and stand together regardless of ethnicity, culture and class.
Hammes earned his MFA in fiction from Old
Dominion University, has had numerous short stories, essays and poems published
in various journals and magazines around the country, and is a contributing
writer in several books. He is also the 2019 South Carolina Arts
Commission Prose Fellow and is presently Director of the Creative Writing program
at Charleston County School of the Arts, the most awarded middle- and
high-school writing program in the nation.