Whatever happened to the baby who fell down the well?

[zgrenville]

...Find out in my new novel, The Wellbaby, by Zack Grenville, available only on Amazon Kindle.

The Wellbaby combines humor, sex, politics, violence, and southwestern folklore to tell the tale of a group of ordinary people struggling to claim their share of the American dream in a small town at the end of the Reagan era.

In 1971, Amanda Prahl falls down a well in her hometown of Iron Lake, Oklahoma. Her life-or-death ordeal captures the attention of a nation until she is rescued by Floyd Smoll, a 21-year laborer and volunteer fireman.

While the event has a successful outcome, it doesn't end happily ever after. Over the following years, Amanda suffers the death of a parent and abandonment by her alcoholic mother. Placed in a foster home, her incompatibility with her foster parents leads to her living alone in her family trailer home at age 15. Forced to quit school to support herself, she works as a waitress during the day and carouses with bikers and criminals at night, awaiting the day when she turns 18 and can withdraw the money in a Trust fund set up for her with donations by well-wishes after original Wellbaby event.

Meanwhile, Floyd, her rescuer, enters an loveless marriage that ends when his wife leaves him for another man, taking their young daughter with her. Other than drinking, his only satisfaction in life comes his job as a shirt-pinner at the Trailblazer Apparel factory, the town's largest employer.

The Wellbaby begins on Amanda's 18th birthday, May 6, 1971, as she prepares to go into town to collect her Trust fund balance and leave Iron Lake forever. Little does she know that she will become the victim of a failed investment play that leaves the fund nearly penniless. This same play is directly connected to the sudden shutdown of the Trailblazer plant, leaving a quarter of the town's population out of work, including Floyd Smoll.

The story chronicles the shattered lives and dreams of both Amanda and Floyd over a ten-month period until their fates intersect once more with ground-breaking repercussions.

Skeptical? Then read the first 30 pages or so on Amazon which will definitely give you a flavor of the novel, its characters, and its many shifting moods. For more information, visit the official web site for The Wellbaby-whose URL is the name of the novel (one word) followed by (dot)com. There you'll find an additional free chapter (one of my favorites!) available nowhere else outside the book itself.

If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can 'borrow' the book for free (although I'd much prefer that you pay for it). At some point, I'll offer free downloads of the whole book on selected days. If you want to be notified when this happens email me at author(at)thewellbaby.com. If enough people express an interest in having it available in printed form, I'll look into doing a print-on-demand version as well.


Enjoy!

Zack Grenville
Author, The Wellbaby

[milestogo]

I saw a review for this on another site and took a chance for 99 cents after reading the first few chapters on Amazon. For a self-published book, it's a very good book. It reminds me a lot of The Last Picture Show in the way it captures the desolation and desperation of small town life. But in spirit The Wellbaby is a lot closer to Mark Twain in the way it alternatives between humor and drama without missing a beat. Some of the lines, particularly those spoken by Amanda Prahl, the main character, are so outrageous they made my snot coffee.

SPOILER ALERT

And some of the tall tales the author weaves into the narrative are great. The tale of a legendary battle between Apaches and the stupidest Texas Rangers in history and a vignette about a famous prostitute known for wearing a bag on her head so people had to guess who she really was would make nice little short stories on their own.

[delilah]

Another Wellbaby fan here. It's one of the funniest books I've read in ages. Not stupid Dave Barry-style boy humor, but razor-sharp satire and sarcasm.

And, I might add, it may have the funniest graphic sex scene ever written. For that alone it's worth the 99 cents!