TELL ME A STORY

About the Book

Tell Me A Story is a mystery novel set in a small southern town during the Depression of the thirties. Loren Oakers, an attorney, is a man who, tyrannized by an abusive father, spent his early adulthood spiting that parent, to the point of bringing home a bride he knew his father would reject. The novel unfolds with a fateful Labor Day picnic, when Oakers’ twin boys are drowned. His wife, holding him responsible because he had been drinking, leaves him, taking their ten-year- old daughter with her. Oakers sinks into despair and is badly injured in a drunk-driving accident. While recovering, he tells stories to children in the children’s ward of the hospital, and is then asked by one of the parents, a radio-station owner, to broadcast children’s stories on the air.

This starts Oakers on a promising new career, with a hit radio program, but when two badly decomposed corpses are found in the woods at Hakers Creek, identified as his wife, Peggy, and daughter, Beth, circumstantial evidence points directly to him. He is brought to trial for the double murders. Feeling guilty and remorseful, he is unable to present a defense because he was drunk out of his mind the night of their deaths. A frightening event occurs during his trial, and the trial itself takes a bizarre twist, but the story doesn’t reach its true and surprising climax until many years later, when Oakers is serving his country during World War II.

About the Author

When he was eleven years old, Joseph Sollish wrote his first story, for which he received his first rejection letter, from Dorothy Parker. A university English teacher, he was born in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, and grew up in various small towns throughout the state. He has written four novels, and his short fiction has appeared in Crescent Review and other literary journals. He is also a stone carver, and lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Claudia.