Originally published in 2012 as an e-book, Cansville is now available in paperback from Barnes & Noble.
The novel, written by Alan Flurry, communications director for UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, was named one of the best books of 2013 by Paste magazine.
In Cansville, playwright Toby Alameda begins a stint as creative director of the Cansville Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky. He sets about to reconstruct the story of his boyhood home and the extended family who had lived there.
The house itself had been expanded from a modest farmhouse where his family took in relatives during the Great Depression. By the time the young Toby was practicing archery in his upstairs bedroom two generations later, the great emptied house had so grown into his being that he hardly gave it any thought.
The plot of the novel is Toby’s attempt to make up a story he already knows; it builds with the writing of the play and culminates in the day before the premiere of The Big House.
