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Lay Your Armor Down

A Novel

Contributors

By Michael Farris Smith

Formats and Prices

Price

$29.00

Price

$38.00 CAD

A dark Southern tale of desperate souls who’ve wound up on the road of poor choices, a messianic child with untold powers, and those out hunting her for their own reward, all drawn together by Michael Farris Smith’s trademark mournful, spirit-gnawing prose.

An old woman, riddled with dementia, walks off into the woods in the middle of the night.
 
A light in the wood draws her to a campfire with two strange, dangerous men, one young and one old, who are there plotting a crime of as-yet-indeterminate purpose.

The two men have a job to do. They’ve been told to find the abandoned church in this burned-out countryside and go into the cellar. For what? You’ll know it when you see it, they were told. When you have it call back and I will tell you what to do.
 
When the two men approach the place, they find bodies littering the churchyard. Inside, at the end of a long hallway, they find a door with light leaking underneath. There, they find the old woman, cut and scratched from traipsing through the woods. Standing next to her is the answer they never could have predicted.
 
So the journey begins and from here nothing can be undone, no step can be taken back.

On Sale
May 27, 2025
Page Count
272 pages
ISBN-13
9780316573375

Michael Ferris Smith

Michael Farris Smith

About the Author

Michael Farris Smith is an award-winning writer whose novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, NPR, Southern Living, Garden & Gun, Oprah Magazine, Book Riot, and numerous other outlets, and have been named Indie Next, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. As a screenwriter, he scripted the feature-film adaptations of his novels Desperation Road and The Fighter, titled for the screen as Rumble Through the Dark. With his band MFS & The Smokes, Smith wrote and released the record Lostville, which was produced by Grammy nominee Jimbo Mathus. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters.
 

Learn more about this author