The Bystanders by Dawn Major

The Bystanders, weaves together small-town eccentricities and characters beginning with the invasion of the Samples family to Lawrenceton, Missouri. Townie, Eddy Bauman, and newcomer, Shannon Lamb-Samples, come of age in the 1980s when big hair is big and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” blasts over the airwaves, but they couldn’t be more different. The real town of Lawrenceton and the surrounding area were part of the Louisiana Purchase, and centuries later, the old-timers still speak Paw Paw French and time-honored traditions run deep.

Though some say small towns are big families, Lawrenceton doesn’t want anything to do with the black sheep of the family. Shannon with her “Girls Just Want to Fun” attitude and fashion, her fortune-telling, Pagan mother, Wendy Samples, along with her hard-partying and abusive stepfather, Dale Samples, are outliers from Los Angeles. Shannon might as well have landed on Mars when Wendy and Dale decide they need a do-over in the countryside. Though Shannon is none too pleased, Eddy is enthralled by her Valley Girl ways. In a town of annual church picnics and beautiful landscapes, the Samples’s trailer on the outside of L-Town is an eyesore to the townsfolk and the family is quickly snubbed. Shannon and Wendy, who could really use some friends, must learn to rely upon themselves to claw their way out of poverty, abuse, and especially Dale.

“In The Bystanders, debut writer Dawn Major writes with subtlety, compassion, and understanding about a time and place in the world that many authors have tackled but few have mastered. This interconnected collection of short stories from the heartland is one of those rare works that is able to capture remembrances, and to remind us all why those moments are worth remembering.” Raymond L. Atkins—Set List, Sweetwater Blues

As a child, Dawn Major moved from California near Lawrenceton, Missouri—the town that inspired The Bystanders.

Dawn Major is an associate editor at Southern Literary Review and has a graduate degree from the Etowah Valley Creative Writing Program. She was a recipient of the James Dickey Review Literary Editor Fellowship, the Dr. Robert Driscoll Excellence in Writing Award on Regional Themes, and Reinhardt University’s Faculty Choice Excellence in Writing Award. Her writing may be found at: Well Read Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, Southern Literary Review, Georgia Gothic Anthology, Springer Mountain Press Summer Slasher Horror Anthology, Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozark Studies, Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art, James Dickey Review, Sanctuary, Sediments Literary-Arts Journal, and Family Life Publications.