Kelly J. Ford has earned wide critical acclaim for her gritty novels of queer Southern suspense ever since the release of her award-winning debut, Cottonmouths, a Los Angeles Review Best Book of the year, followed by Real Bad Things, which critic Jon Land called “an outstanding literary crime thriller in all respects.” Ford, who is Southern by several generations and grew up in the foothills of the Ozarks, says that “Arkansas is in my roots and made me who I am.”
Ford returns to the rural South for the setting of her third novel, THE HUNT, which Thomas & Mercer published on July 25, 2023. Partly set at a plastics factory similar to where she worked as a press operator in college, the story centers on blue collar workers in a small, insular town. It was important to her to highlight family influences and circumstances that can potentially lead people to become accidental criminals, or to be perceived as such due to bias within the criminal justice system.
Transcription available on request.