Water Valley, MS | cool Dog Sound LLC (November 11, 2022)

Paperback. Signed.

Tyler Keith’s debut novel is delivered in a deft hand, detailing the landscape of his native Florida panhandle as intimately as his complex characters.

"Tyler Keith writes with the rhythm and thrum of a gospel choir. The Mark of Cain lives on the rim of salvation, where hope is dangled like some heavenly gift above the desolate, damaged world below. It's a hot, hard, hardscrabble life, and The Mark of Cain stares into the fire with eyes wide open." — Michael Farris Smith, author of Nick and Blackwood

In a world that has changed much during the six years he’s been in prison, Ronnie Harris struggles to piece together a new life from the wreckage of his old one. As a condition of his early parole, Ronnie must stay at a halfway-house for ex-cons called Camp Eden, where things are not exactly what they seem.

As Ronnie realizes that he may still be imprisoned, a man from his past, Travis Campbell, shows up to bring Ronnie back into the world that led him to prison the first time. A rough world of moonshine, marijuana, and meth, which also happens to be the Harris family’s business. Eventually, Ronnie’s struggle for a new life brings everything to a head in a violent revealing conclusion.

Tyler Keith was born and raised in the Panhandle of Florida. He moved to Mississippi at 18 and received a degree in English Literature at University of Mississippi where he studied writing under Barry Hannah. He spent the next twenty years writing songs and playing in the bands the Neckbones, Tyler Keith and the Preacher’s Kids, Tyler Keith and the Apostles, and Teardrop City, making 14 albums and touring in the U.S. and Europe. In 2013 he wrote and performed in a musical play called “the Outlaw Biker.” He returned to the University of Mississippi and received a master’s degree in Southern Studies, and a MFA in Documentary Expression. This is his first novel.