Michael Morris Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Michael Morris is an American author best known for writing the books: A Place Called Wiregrass, Slow Way Home, and Man in the Blue Moon. His debut novel, A Place Called Wiregrass won the Christy Award for Best First Novel. He would also see Slow Way Home recognized as one of the best novels of the year by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Michael is a fifth-generation native of Perry, Florida and is an expert in southern culture and characters because he’s lived it his whole life. The southern culture is the foundation of his writing and it makes up the inspiration for all of his work. Micahel attended and graduated from Auburn University in Alabama. After his graduation, Morris would take a job working for U.S. Senator Bob Graham before switching to working as a sales representative for pharmaceutical companies. During his time in sales, Michael realized that he had a life-long desire to write and began writing things during the evenings. One of these things was a screenplay that now sits safely about the bottom of his desk.

Morris would change careers against when he accepted a position in government affairs that took him to North Carolina. It was after his move that he decided to take writing more seriously and began taking classes to work his way towards that goal. He took classes under author Tim McLaurin and earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University. The story that he began writing during his classes would eventually become his first novel. He finished the book and A Place Called Wiregrass was released in April of 2002. The book was named a Booksense 76 selection by members of the American Independent Booksellers Association as and is part of the southern literature curriculum at two universities.

He would follow that up with Slow Way Home which earned him comparisons to classic authiors like Harper Lee and Flannery O’Connor. The book features an eight-year-old boy who is left behind by his mother as she sets off to Canada. He heads to his grandparents’ farm where he finds love and family.

In 2004, Michael authored a novella based on the Grammy-nominated song by Tim McGraw, Live Like You Were Dying. The novellas was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and was popular among both Tim McGraw fans and fans of Morris’ writing. In addition to writing, Morris has also written essays that have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He also contributed to a the southern anthology, Stories From The Blue Moon Café II. Michael lives and writes in Fairhope, Alabama where he resides with his wife, Melanie.

A Place Called Wiregrass is the book that put Morris on the map. The book follows a woman named Erma Lee and her grandaughter who are on the run. They’re running from an abusive husband, a mother who never cared, and the soul-numbing job that Erma hates. Erma and her grandaughter, Cher, decide to run and flee to the town of Wiregrass, Alabama to escape their past and start fresh. That’s the idea at least. Here, Erma makes friends with a woman known as Miss Claudia who has a few secrets of her own that she is hiding. The two women find mercy and a promise of a better future in the town of Wiregrass, but that turns out to be shortlived when Cher’s convict father arrives to town. His arrival will change everything and force all three of these women to come to term with the secrets from their past.

Morris is also the author of Slow Way Home. The book introduces a boy named Brandon Willard who is far wiser than your average eight-year-old boy. He loves his mom, G.I. Joe, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches like most kids his age, but he is much more than that. His adult outlook on life serves him well when his mother leaves him behind at the bus station as she sets off to Canada in search of her destiny. Brandon endds up at his grandparents where he spends his days playing with his cousins and trying to forget about his mother. He finds a new family and learns to trust adults again during this time. A year later, his mother returns with a new man and wants her son back. Brandon’s grandparents don’t agree with the order and decide to flee with him and start a new life in a small Florida town. Brandon becomes involved with God’s Hospital, a church run by the gregarious Sister Delores, a woman who is committed to a life of service for all members of the community, black and white, regardless of some locals’ disapproval.

In 2012, Morris released Man in the Blue Moon. This story is based on actual stories that Morris’ grandfather would tell him when he was younger and the book is filled with interesting characters. The book focuses on a woman named Ella who is alone and struggling to support her three sons. Eighteen years ago, she had a promising career as an artist until the day she met a man that her aunt called “A gambler at best. A con artist at worst,” and now she is left alone with her children during World War I. Ella is in a battle of her own against a local banker to keep her family’s land in Florida. One day, a delivery man arrives at her door to delivery a clock. She thinks that she can sell the clock and pay off the debt, but ends up with something else entirely. A mystery man tries to convince her that he can help her avoid foreclosure and with little options she begins a tenous trust with the mysterious man, but it soon becomes evident that things are not as they appear and Ella’s family land is in jeopardy.