From the acclaimed author of Stay and Fight comes an uproarious, unabashed novel of an Appalachian town, the diverse locals who make it home, an influx of white nationalists trying to take over, and the ways in which the battle brings out our light.

Ditched on the side of the road, two friends shelter for the night in a barn. When they wake, one comes face-to-face with his destiny—an antique letterpress, the Vandercook No. 4.

Woody and Leroi have been friends their whole lives. But as Leroi falls in with the collective that cooks every Sunday in the park, learning about traveler symbols and how to slice a cucumber, Woody starts to snort the pills he’s been selling. He makes his art: beautiful letterpress signs for protests, and business cards commissioned by a woman he knows as Stasia but whom others know to be the leader of a white nationalist movement. Stasia bought the barn with the Vandercook in it; she says Woody can use it anytime. What does she want in return?

Woody and Leroi are just two residents of this Appalachian town. Their lives intersect, often at the library, with a cast of delightfully eccentric individuals. Eloise, the town librarian and lifelong activist. The punks at Food Not Bombs. Sharon, a wry social worker. Emma, a mom trying really hard not to take out her anger on her kids. Amber, the health goddess who runs the Discipline Cafe. Sylvester, an unhoused man with a long history in town. Matt Mistelthwaite, a World War II veteran with his own connections to the Vandercook. When Stasia insists on hosting a European Heritage Rug Braiding workshop at the library, everyone’s lives will be upended.

In Avalon, Rise, an ensemble novel genuinely rooted in the collective, Madeline ffitch asks big questions and doesn’t look away from the answers.

Madeline ffitch is the author of the novel Stay and Fight, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and a Lambda Literary Prize, as well as the story collection Valparaiso, Round the Horn. She cofounded the punk theater company Missoula Oblongata and was part of the rural direct action collective Appalachia Resist, which took as its commitments environmental and racial justice. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Paris Review, Tin House, Granta, n+1, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Creative Capital State of the Art Prize and two O. Henry Prizes and was included in the 2024 Best American Short Stories anthology. She lives with her children in the hills of Appalachian Ohio.