Author Event: Michael Farris Smith

Name: Author Event: Michael Farris Smith
Start: 2025-06-08T15:00:00-04:00
Location: 415 Brooks Street, Wake Forest, NC, United States, North Carolina 27587

Schedule

Sun, 08 Jun, 2025 at 03:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

415 Brooks Street, Wake Forest, NC, United States, North Carolina 27587 | Wake Forest, NC

Page 158 Books, along with the Wake Forest Listening Room, are thrilled that author and musician Michael Farris Smith will return to the store on June 8th to celebrate his latest novel, Lay Your Armor Down, and share music from his album, Lostville.
A "prophetic, propulsive" tale of one mysterious, messianic child with untold powers who draws three desperate souls into acts of mercy and mayhem. (Scott Blackburn)
An old woman, riddled with dementia, walks off into the woods in the middle of the night. A light in the wood draws her to a campfire with two strange, dangerous men, one young and one old, who are there plotting a crime of as-yet-indeterminate purpose. The two men have a job to do. They are hunting something precious but have only been told: you’ll know it when you see it. When they arrive at the place, an abandoned church cellar in the burned-out countryside, they find an answer they never could have predicted. Now, the job feels dubious, one that’ll surely bring them to ruin. Yet if they’re to go against orders, no step can be undone, and nothing can be taken back.
In spare, imagistic prose, Lay Your Armor Down reduces the epic to its most elemental. It charts the course of several broken people, all outrunning danger’s dark fingers, and all brought together for one last chance at redemption.
Michael Farris Smith is an award-winning writer whose novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, NPR, Southern Living, Garden & Gun, Oprah Magazine, Book Riot, and numerous other outlets, and have been named Indie Next, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. As a screenwriter, he scripted the feature-film adaptations of his novels Desperation Road and The Fighter, titled for the screen as Rumble Through the Dark. With his band MFS & The Smokes, Smith wrote and released the record Lostville, which was produced by Grammy nominee Jimbo Mathus. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters.