What Authors are saying:
“Without a doubt, Dawn Major is thoroughly schooled in the full-blown existence of jealousy, lust, love, confusion, pettiness, mystery, violence, hope, et al, exhibited by small-town denizens. The Bystanders stands tall in the world of coming-of-age novels.”
– George Singleton, Author of The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs
“Intelligent, humorous, and sublimely original, Dawn Major’s debut novel, The Bystanders, entwines short story narrative into a master tapestry of rural Missouri life in the 1980’s, offering an insightful study into how people distribute responsibility and excuse their own inaction.”
–Robert Gwaltney, Author of The Cicada Tree
“Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty move over, there is a new voice on the stage, Dawn Major’s first novel, The Bystanders, is about to enter the ranks of Southern Literature.“
-J.M. White, Author of Pulling Down The Sun and The Beyond Within
“Full of passion and punch, the characters in Dawn Major’s gritty debut novel, The Bystanders, grab hold and don’t let go. Living with her family in a trailer on the outskirts of Lawrenceton, Missouri, teenager Shannon feels outcast from her peers, as her mother Wendy continually combats an abusive husband. Mother and daughter struggle to fill empty places in their hearts in this commanding story sure to touch the reader.”
–Susan Beckham Zurenda, Author of Bells for Eli
“The Bystanders is a deliciously dark novel. Major created a cast of characters that are at home in a Flannery O’Connor story. Readers will not put this book down until they finish the last page.”
-Ann Hite, Award Winning author of Haints On Black Mountain
“Dawn Major has written a gritty and hard-hitting novel about a couple of teenagers trapped in poverty, violence, and addiction. This colorful novel is set in the small real town of Lawrenceton, Missouri, whose dark side Major exposes in prose that is vivid and sensate. In the end, thankfully, Major shows that even a tragic world offers a way out. Major is a writer to watch.”
–Janisse Ray, Award Winning Author of The Woods of Fannin County and Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
Interviews and Reviews:
SOUTHERN LITERARY REVIEW’S APRIL READ OF THE MONTH: “THE BYSTANDERS” BY DAWN MAJOR
“Jealousy and love, fear and violence, inclusion and exclusion—all the good and the bad of small-town life—are present. Readers will recognize themselves and their neighbors in the characters and see similarities between their hometowns and Lawrenceton in this excellent novel. Scenes of outlandish dark humor as well as those highlighting serious social issues make The Bystanders the sort of worthwhile story that lingers in your thoughts long after reading it.”
SOUTHERN LITERARY REVIEW, a Magazine for Literature for the American South, CONGRATULATES ASSOCIATE EDITOR DAWN MAJOR ON THE PUBLICATION OF HER DEBUT NOVEL, THE BYSTANDERS (MOONCOVE PRESS, 2023).
DONNA STANLEY MEREDITH INTERVIEWS DAWN MAJOR, AUTHOR OF “THE BYSTANDERS” for Southern Literary Review
RECKON REVIEW: Standing Up, Standing By, A review of Dawn Major’s The Bystanders by Jon Sokol
“The bystander effect is a theory describing a syndrome where normally decent people display apathy toward an injustice being perpetrated in front of them, especially in the presence of other people. Their thinking is that surely someone will do something. The unfortunate result is that all too often no one does anything to help the victim. In Dawn Major’s debut novel, The Bystanders, this terrifyingly common condition is explored as she tells the story of a dysfunctional family who moves from Los Angeles to the small rural town of Lawrenceton, Missouri.”
WELL READ MAGAZINE: Mary Ellen Thompson Interviews Dawn Major, Author of The Bystanders
ATL Voyage Interviews Author of The Bystanders, Dawn Major
Heavy Feather Review: Mary Ellen Thompson Talks to Dawn Major about The Bystanders:
An avid fan of the rodeo and cowboy hats, Dawn Major has crafted her debut novel, The Bystanders, which, at first glance, appears to be an academic commentary about American society. But appearances are deceiving.
Set in a small town in Missouri in the 1980s, this story uniquely captures the essence of the characters’ lives and the undercurrents which rock their foundation when an unlikely couple from California moves in and shakes things up for the locals.
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Order The Bystanders by Dawn Major:
Bookstore Owners: Please contact Author for Discounted Rate (50% off and free S/H) at dwnmjrwriter@gmail.com. Individual Orders and/or Signed Copies: Contact Author directly to pay via Venmo at dwnmjrwriter@gmail.com OR fill out form below and pay via PayPal (shipping is included).
The Bystanders by Dawn Major
The Bystanders is a dark coming-of-age story set in the 1980s when big hair was big, and MTV ruled. In a quiet town of annual picnics and landscapes, the Samples’s rundown trailer and odd behaviors aren’t charming the locals. The Bystanders pays homage to Americana, its small-town eccentricities, and the rural people of the Northern Mississippi Delta region of Southeast Missouri, a unique area of the country where people still speak Paw Paw French and honor Old World traditions.
$19.00