Equipped with the grace of a fencer and the attentiveness of a journalist, A.D. Hopkins drops us into the world of teenager Stony Shelor, a blossoming humanist, would-be-detective, and hopeful gallant. Read it for the pleasure of this boy’s ideas, for the perfectly pitched turn-of-phrase, for the reminder that in every community, there are those fighting for the right and the true.—Laura McBride, author of We Are Called to Rise and In the Midnight Room.

The Boys Who Woke Up Early might be A.D. Hopkins' first novel, but it feels like it has always been with us; it's a novel filled with heart and grace and a surging sense of wonder, while also lined with brutality and violence. A rare combination, for sure, but A.D. Hopkins is a rare writer.—Tod Goldberg, author of Gangsterland and Gangster Nation.

A rollicking coming-of-age tale, shining a light on the not too distant past of the Jim Crow South.  With his storyteller’s ear and reporter’s attention to detail, A.D. Hopkins has created poignant characters and a plotline to match.  His lines convey the sadness and shortness of life—the sorrows brought on by family members lost to typical feuds and grudges whose origins no one can remember. In Hopkins’ hands, it all comes to life."—Sally Denton, author of The Bluegrass Conspiracy: An Inside Story of Power, Greed, Drugs & Murder

A coming-of-age story that doesn’t pull its punches. Set in the waning years of the Jim Crow era in rural Virginia, it’s a narrative in which fists fly, guns go off and the Ku Klux Klan is hiding in plain sight. A.D. Hopkins convincingly re-creates the time and place, and his characters are as natural as the creative turns of phrase he captures from his native South.—Geoff Schumacher, National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement and author of Sun, Sin & Suburbia: The History of Modern Las Vegas

The Boys Who Woke Up Early is all at once a coming of age novel, an action story, and a tale of social transformation of a southern small town confronting the early civil rights movement...Fast cars, moonshine, gunplay, and the Ku Klux Klan all influence life in the town of Early in the late 1950s, tucked away in the mountains of Appalachia. A. D. Hopkins is a versatile storyteller. The America of today is sorely in need of this reminder, this reawakening of our minds and hearts."—Douglas Unger, author of Leaving the Land and Voices from Silence.

March 5th to April 12th West Coast Tour * Las Vegas, Nevada * Carson City, Nevada * Los Angeles, California * Phoenix, Arizona August 4th to August 24th -- Virginia and North Carolina * Meadows of Dan, Virginia * Roanoke, Virginia * Richmond, Virginia * Arlington, Virginia * Durham, North Carolina * Winston-Salem, North Carolina * Charleston, West Virginia