The Volcano Keeper - by Bradley Sides (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

When a volcano suddenly emerges in the middle of his family's Alabama cattle pasture, young Charlie Melvin is confronted with a promise his grandfather once made--that something extraordinary would rise from the land.

As Charlie comes of age, he wrestles with the meaning of the volcano and the legacy of his family. His story unfolds through evocative vignettes that explore love, loss, responsibility, and faith.

Graceful, tender, and emotionally resonant, Bradley Sides' The Volcano Keeper is a moving portrait of a young man navigating grief while discovering the quiet miracles woven into the natural world.

Review Quotes

"Bradley Sides writes with a tender wonder that'll leave you weeping and slack-jawed. The Volcano Keeper is a mythic tale about life's eternal concerns. You'll read this book in one big gulp, then go back for more."

--Caleb Johnson, author of Treeborne

"I most surely recognize and remember the Alabama that Bradley Sides writes about in this fine novella--except for the volcano that suddenly but very believably makes its appearance on the Melvin family land. Its presence is a mystery that both characters and readers must divine. The question is, will it destroy or will its magic remake the lost world we all long to recover? What I don't doubt is the magic of this book."

--Marlin Barton, author of Children of Dust and Pasture Art

"The Volcano Keeper is a tender, unsparing story of the Melvin family and the wild world that thrives around them. I fell headlong into their adventures--calf-birthing, biscuit-baking, June bug-chasing, rat snake-coaxing, and worrying and working the land they love as it trembles beneath their feet. I won't soon forget Charlie, his beloveds and beagle-dog Rufus, nor his steadfast faith in what matters most in the here and in the hereafter. Bradley Sides writes with a deep, poetic beauty, capturing the loves and griefs we shoulder in a language shaped by sinew and blood."

--Jolene McIlwain, author of Sidle Creek, an "NPR and Library Journal best book of the year"

"The Volcano Keeper is part The Waltons and part magical realism. Charlie's adventures, fears, and goodness will keep the reader going. This is a remarkable novella."

--George Singleton, author of The Curious Lives of Non-Profit Martyrs

"With The Volcano Keeper, Bradley Sides offers up a fable of family love and stewardship that will stay with you long after you finish this captivating novella. When Charlie loses his grandfather, and a volcano appears on the family farm, he takes care of the home place and manages to balance loss with joy and wonder. Sides renders the southern landscape and its traditions in gorgeous, vivid detail, as he offers up a tender, hopeful story of the love between a boy and his grandad and the caretaking legacy that bonds them."

--Ellen Birkett Morris, author of Beware the Tall Grass and Lost Girls

About the Author

Bradley Sides is the author of Those Fantastic Lives and Crocodile Tears Didn't Cause the Flood, a 2024 Book of the Year finalist at Southern Literary Review. His fiction has been featured on LeVar Burton Reads, and his reviews, interviews, and essays appear at Chapter 16, Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, Southern Review of Books, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife in Madison, Alabama, and teaches writing and literature at Calhoun Community College.