Novelist Tommy Hays writes about important human things like growing up — I mean seizing your adult life instead of avoiding it — in Sam’s Crossing, his first novel. Coming of age, as a ten year old in the South when death, race, and religion intermingle and where being a “Waffle House mystic” is an actual career choice in In the Family Way.
His third novel is just out from Saint Martin’s. The Pleasure Was Mine deals with dealing with Alzheimer’s. This time at the late end of life. Tommy will be in Chapel Hill at McIntyre’s Books on April 16 and in Raleigh at Quail Ridge Books on April 14.