Join us as we celebrate Tony Gentry’s book The Coal Tower. A signing will follow. This event will be free and open to the public.
It’s Game Day at the University of Virginia, launching a new school year, when Charlottesville fills to bursting with incoming students, football fans, and alumni. Famed neurosurgeon Rainsworth Cannon and his equestrienne wife, their goth teenage daughter and her train-hopping boyfriend, and a cop and his wayward brother all have been living for this day. But they cannot imagine how at its end their lives will be changed and forever entwined by what goes down at the Coal Tower. A reviewer noted, “The Coal Tower has it all: colorful characters, rapid pacing, dark humor, and an unexpectedly moving story. The author has a fond eye for the eccentricities of people, imbuing his debut novel with a basic love for humanity that makes reading it a joy.”
Tony Gentry is the author of the novel The Coal Tower, the story collection Last Rites, and five young adult biographies (Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jesse Owens, Alice Walker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Elvis Presley). Raised in Fork Union, he holds degrees from Harvard College (BA), New York University (MA) and the University of Virginia (PhD). His two sons were born at Martha Jefferson Hospital, when he and his wife Christine worked in Charlottesville as occupational therapists. They moved to Richmond a few years ago when Tony assumed a professorship at Virginia Commonwealth University. Tony’s poetry and short stories have been published widely in literary journals.