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A fifth-generation native of Perry, Florida, Michael Morris knows Southern culture and characters. They are the foundation and inspiration for the stories and award-winning novels he writes.
Upon graduating from Auburn University, Michael worked for a US senator and as a sales representative for pharmaceutical companies. It was then that he decided to follow a lifelong desire and began writing in the evenings. The screenplay he penned is still someplace in the bottom of a desk drawer.
It was when Michael accepted a position in government affairs and moved to North Carolina that he began to take writing more seriously. While studying under author Tim McLaurin, Michael started the story that would eventually become his first novel, A Place Called Wiregrass. His debut won a Christy Award for Best First Novel and was named an Indie Next List Great Read by booksellers across the country. Michael’s second novel, Slow Way Home, was compared to the work of Harper Lee, Flannery O’Connor and Mark Twain by the Washington Post. It was nationally ranked as one of the top three recommended books by the American Booksellers Association and named one of the best novels of the year by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Birmingham News.
Michael is also the author of a novella based on the Grammy-nominated song “Live Like You Were Dying,” which became a finalist for the esteemed Southern Book Critics Circle Award.
Reviewed by Dr. Karen Hutchins Pirnot for Readers' Favorite
"Man in the Blue Moon" by Michael Morris is a book for all seasons and for all types of readers. Written by a Southern author, it tells the tale of Ella Wallace, a Florida woman with three sons whose husband drank, gambled, did cocaine and then abandoned the family, leaving Ella with a small merchandise store and a mountain of debts. Enter a strange man claiming to be a cousin of Ella's husband. He has mysterious healing powers and he has the ability to distract Ella to no end. Destitute and needing all the help she can get, Ella hires the stranger to cut down a forest on her land, hoping to sell the wood and pay off the mortgage to her small store and the surrounding land. There are many ploys working in this novel and the reader will be delighted with them all.
The author appears to combine styles and flavors from O'Connor, Mark Twain and Harper Lee. The story takes place during World War I and it is filled with characters and vivid images of the Florida Panhandle area. Everyone who reads the novel will surely have a favorite character. All are developed to the fullest, giving the reader the privilege of hopping right into the story and either helping the villains to their deserved demise or standing beside the heroes and heroines as they battle against the odds. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and it will be one to be reread in the years to come.
