About the Book

A young boy. An old man. And a journey of the heart.

My fraternal twin, Michael, died two hours after birth, drowning from fluid in his lungs. When I was two, my Mom and Dad were killed in a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer. I was reared by Granddaddy and Granny, who had lived with my folks in the same rented home. I remembered neither my parents' lives nor their deaths. I suppose that's a blessing and a curse. My grandparents had provided details my young mind could understand, but I pushed them away. I did not want them.

Back in that field after thirty years, I stood poised at the edge of an abyss.

End of Summer is a poignant, literary novel that explores the mysteries of life, love and death through the eyes of a nine year old boy...interpreted by the man he grew to be.

A deeply moving and passionate book, Michael Potts' End of Summer is a poignant literary novel about childhood and memory. This is contemporary Southern fiction at its best. In textured language and with heartfelt attention to detail, Potts' nuanced portrayal of rural life in southern Appalachia and a young boy's initial encounter with death reminds us that life at the economic margins can be culturally and spiritually rich, and that even as absences and losses sometimes damage us, these can also strengthen and redeem.
- Michael Colonnese, Ph.D.
Author of Sex and Death, I Suppose and Temporary Agency
About the Author: Michael Potts grew up near Smyrna, Tennessee and is currently Professor of Philosophy at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina. His undergraduate degree (in Biblical languages) is from David Lipscomb University. He also holds the Master of Theology from Harding University Graduate School of Religion, the Master of Arts (in Religion) from Vanderbilt University, and the Ph.D. in philosophy from The University of Georgia. Michael has fifteen articles in scholarly journals, nine book chapters, six encyclopedia articles, two book reviews, and he co-edited the book, "Beyond Brain Death: The Case Against Brain Based Criteria for Human Death," which was published in 2000 by Kluwer Academic Publishers. He also has over thirty scholarly presentations, including one presented at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at The Vatican in 2005. Michael is a 2007 graduate of The Writers Loft at Middle Tennessee State University and a 2007 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. His poetry has been published in Journal of the American Medical Association, Iodine Poetry Journal, Poems & Plays, and other literary journals. His poetry chapbook, "From Field to Thicket," won the 2006 Mary Belle Campbell Poetry Book Award of the North Carolina Writers Network. His creative nonfiction essay, "Haunted," won the Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Award, also sponsored by the North Carolina Writers Network. Besides reading and writing, he enjoys vegetable gardening, canning, and ghost investigations (just for fun!). He and his wife, Karen, live with their three cats, Frodo, Rosie, and Pippin, in Linden, North Carolina.