"...Then Like The Blind Man: ORBIE’S STORY grabs you from the very first page and carries you along, breathless and tense, until the very last, very satisfying sentence."
--- The San Francisco Book Review ---
At nine, Orbie seems to live his life along a precipice. He is burdened with an overabundance of difficult choices which would be beyond the capacities of most boys his age-but Orbie is about to discover that he’s no ordinary boy. In the debut novel from artist and poet Freddie Owens, nothing is ever precisely what it seems: prejudice is not innate, the dead aren’t really dead, and those in positions of power cannot be trusted.
Orbie finds himself deposited at his grandparent’s home in Kentucky one summer, his stepfather, Victor, having had a change of heart about including him on a family prospecting trip to Florida. Except "heart" doesn’t seem, to Orbie, quite the right word to apply to his stepfather, whose tempestuous temper took him from the widowed family’s salvation to its most dangerous element in one outburst flat.
With no end to his stay in sight, Orbie finds himself settling into routines all but unthinkable weeks before. He becomes fast friends with the Kingdom Boys, who he’d have happily kept himself segregated from back home in Detroit, though he now finds that skin color is not the best indicator of trustworthiness. He forms a strong bond with Willis, the stunningly talented, physically disabled black boy connected to his grandparents via their mysterious friend Moses, who may call down the rain.
Then Like the Blind Man is an electrifying porthole to the South of the ’50s, where, though inane prejudice may have dominated, kindness and justice also had a place. Orbie’s sharecropping grandparents, by defying convention with unnerving grace, become founts of colloquial wisdom whose appeal is impossible to resist, and the Orbie they nurture-the best version of a boy who may otherwise have been lost-is someone the reader comes to love.
Michelle Anne Schingler | ForeWord Reviews
- ABNA Quarter Finalist
- Received IRDiscovery Award for Best in Literary Fiction
- Finalist for Kindle Book Review’s Literary Fiction Award
- Received Kirkus Review’s STAR for exceptional Merit
- Featured in Kirkus Review’s Trade Magazine
- Honorable Mention: Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards
- Retailers, Libraries and Educators can get the book through Ingram Wholesale
- Now available in Bookstores Nationwide!
- An Amazon Bestseller!
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Down To Read Reviews
A storm is brewing in the all-but-forgotten backcountry of Kentucky. And, for young Orbie Ray, the swirling heavens may just have the power to tear open his family's darkest secrets. Then Like The Blind Man: Orbie's Story is the enthralling debut novel by Freddie Owens, which tells the story of a feisty wunderkind in the segregated South of the 1950s, and the forces he must overcome to restore order in his world. Nine-year-old Orbie already has his cross to bear. After the death of his father, his mother Ruby has off and married Victor, a slick-talking man with a snake tattoo. Orbie hates his stepfather more than he can stand, a fact that lands him at his grandparents' place in Harlan's Crossroads, Kentucky. Orbie grudgingly adjusts to life with his doting Granny and carping Granpaw, who are a bit too keen on their black neighbors for Orbie's taste, not to mention their Pentecostal congregation of snake handlers. Soon, however, he finds his worldviews changing, particularly when it comes to matters of race, religion and the true cause of his father's death. Equal parts Hamlet and Huckleberry Finn, Then Like The Blind Man is certain to resonate with lovers of literary and historical fiction, particularly in the grand Southern tradition of storytelling.
