Praise for The Skin Artist

"George Hovis’s impressive first novel is the complex saga of a young man’s search for his own identity on the dark side of the New South. In The Skin Artist, Hovis has created an old-fashioned morality tale set against some of the most garish manifestations of the “Sunbelt.” . . . dark, sexy, and compulsively readable . . . "

—Lee Smith, author of Dimestore and Guests on Earth

"Out of America's age of information, image, tattoo, and Adam and Eve eroticism comes a tightly written novel about addiction, family, and religion. The Skin Artist is at once both smooth-deep literary and fast-eddy suspenseful. George Hovis's first novel—it never slows down one iota—is an extraordinary debut."

—Clyde Edgerton, author of The Floatplane Notebooks and Raney

"In his premier novel George Hovis displays a world we know and try to turn our gaze from. But the story is too powerful, the forces of destruction too strong, and we readers watch, hypnotized, as the descent gathers friends, lovers, and family into its vortex. Can such dark passages lead to hope?

—Fred Chappell, author of Dagon and I Am One of You Forever

"Equal parts psychological complication and harrowing action, a pull-no-punches tale of one man's reckoning with his mistakes. An unforgettable read."

--Leah Stewart, author of What You Don't Know About Charlie Outlaw