“Alexander Van Der Pool is off his meds and high on his conviction that nothing matters more than poetry. He packs up his poems, his gun, and his knife, and sets out to stake his claim on art. In this touching and wonderful novel, James Cherry follows Flannery O’Conner’s surprising dictum and literally holds a gun to his characters’ heads. Their earnest and honest engagement in the moral confrontation that follows will tell you everything you need to know about race in America.” -Valerie Martin “Early on in Edge of the Wind, three bluebirds light on a tree near Alexander van der Pool, and James E. Cherry’s prose gives a sense of motion, sound, shadow, and color. As those bluebirds visit, so too do the characters who live in the books, whose voices come with the same fidelity as the west Tennessee sound that rings from these pages. The fiction is vividly composed on multiple tracks, with voices on the page, in the mind, and in the flesh, working in concert. With a narrative style that shows moments of both patience and zoom, James E. Cherry’s fiction creates new intersections between fresh storytelling and the history in its roots.” -Ravi Howard