Birmingham, 35 Miles [Paperback]

James Braziel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 26, 2008

In this haunting and poignant debut novel, James Braziel tells an unforgettable story of love, family, and survival across a world that has already begun to die.…

When the ozone layer opened and the sun relentlessly scorched the land, there was nothing left but to hope. Mathew Harrison had always heard of a better life as close as Birmingham, only thirty-five miles away—zones of blue sky, wet grass, and clean breathable air. But to him it’s a myth, a place guarded by soldiers, off limits to all but the lucky few. Meanwhile Mat works alongside his father, mining only the red clay that the once fertile Alabama soil can offer.

Now, with the killing deserts on the move again and the woman he loves on a Greyhound heading north, Mat has a travel visa and every reason to leave. But his roots in this lifeless soil inexplicably hold him firmly to the past. Torn between hope and resignation, with time running out, Mat must make a fateful choice between a new life and the one that isn’t ready to let him go.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in a near-future Alabama rendered virtually lifeless by a hole in the ozone layer, Braziel's relentlessly dark debut focuses on Mathew Harrison, a young man who's never known anything but dust storms, heat, the killing sun and a life of migrant labor. Forbidden to move north (the nearby city of Birmingham is closed), Mat, his father and their peers labor in government-run clay mines that may be nothing more than hideously dangerous make-work. Cut off from communication with the so-called Saved World, the undestroyed part of the country, they're treated much like the Okies of the dust bowl era. Grown to adulthood in this soul-destroying environment, Mat nonetheless finds joy in his marriage to a local girl, Jennifer. The young couple are among the favored few who have acquired visas, a way out of the hellhole of the dead South. Poetic, grim and hallucinatory, this harrowing work is not for the faint of heart, though it will appeal strongly to anyone who loved Cormac McCarthy's The Road. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“I welcome James Braziel’s debut novel as an extraordinarily lyrical and innovative work. It is both a speculative novel about the brutal consequences of global warming, and a traditional work that memorializes the landscapes and relationships of the rural South. Most of all, it is a rumination on love and survival that is visionary and inspiring.”—Anthony Grooms, author of Trouble no More: Stories and Bombingham: A Novel.

“Vividly imagined.”—Entertainment Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 292 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (February 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055338502X
• ISBN-13: 978-0553385021
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,856,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Braziel is the author of the Bantam novels Birmingham, 35 Miles and Snakeskin Road. Weathervane, a chapbook of his poetry was published by Finishing Line Press. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Berkeley Fiction Review, Chattahoochee Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Clackamas Literary Review, among other journals. He has also been the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Georgia Council for the Arts and twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Currently, he teaches creative writing at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Enduring Landscape of the Mind, March 27, 2009

By 

Book Lover (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Birmingham, 35 Miles (Paperback)

James Braziel succeeds in creating a novel with powerful imagery and poignant characters. His main character, Matthew, is caught in a struggle to survive in the devastated South after it is scorched by a hole in the ozone. Longing for and bound to the past, Matthew labors to endure the harsh and brutal conditons of the work camp, refusing to abandon the land of his fathers, a vast desert where buildings and hopes ebb away. In one symbolic scene, Matthew holds and treasures a stolen library book - a book which is deteriorating rapidly into dust. Amid the bleak and uncertain future Matthew faces, Braziel infuses great love, humor, and tenderness. In this poetic and beautiful book, Braziel portrays a world where nothing is permanent, where decay threatens to evaporate all that has been known, where love is meant to be enjoyed for its present joys, where time is frozen, and where the most vivid of all lands is the inescapable, captivating terrain of the human mind.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lyrical, evocative, and haunting, April 17, 2009

By 

Jude Simone (Gainesville, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Birmingham, 35 Miles (Paperback)

Imaginatively conceived and beautifully written, this first novel casts its characters and its readers into future landscapes of devastation and waste in the U.S. South, a setting that acknowledges the historical violences of the region's past and yet also presciently forewarns of ecological disasters to come if we do not have the courage to create alternative worlds.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sand, clay, sand, sand - with a lot of wind mixed in, October 17, 2011

By 

broiderqueen "army mama" (Southern Oregon) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Birmingham, 35 Miles (Paperback)

I liked the writing - wasn't thrilled with the story! There were many lyrical, gritty passages in "Birmingham 35 Miles." I felt that I was actually visiting this sere, wind-blown dusty hell of a landscape and I could understand the obsession the main character, Mathew, had with the land and his memories. The descriptive passages were excellent.

Character development and storyline definitely needed work. I couldn't get too involved in the characters' lives or tribulations. Yes, there were pieces here and there that I enjoyed but the story was disjointed, the characters withdrawn and stilted and I didn't like them much, and, therefore, it was difficult to read.

I read the sequel to this book Snakeskin Road and this flip-flopped. I thought the storyline and character development were much better in "Snakeskin Road" but the writing itself did not flow as well or affect me as strongly, either positively or negatively.

I happened to read "Snakeskin Road" first and I actually think it works that way. I don't think it matters in which order you read them. OR maybe that was the whole problem with my reading experience - if I had read this book first, everything would have clicked into place and I would have rated both books 5 stars. But I REALLY don't think so.