David Moloney worked in the Hillsborough County Department of Corrections, New Hampshire, from 2007 to 2011. He received a BA in English and creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he now teaches. He lives north of Boston with his family.
He is the author of the novel Barker House.
At Electric Lit, Moloney tagged seven "books that deal with confinement, but also the need to escape," including:
Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha HuntRead about the other entries on the list.
In a dual narrative set in different timelines, this novel follows Ruth as a young girl, and then older and mute as Aunt Ruth. Her confinement, in the beginning, is physical, trapped in upstate New York on The Love of Christ! Foster Home, Farm,and Mission. Most of the children have deformities, including Ruth, who has scar-like constellations on her face, which The Father wants, because damaged children are easily converted to his church. The Father once prepared for the Apocalypse, his go-to teaching to end each lesson, but now he doesn’t want to survive it at all.
Ruth and Nat channel the dead, and find themselves linked with a salesman, a Comet-sniffing cult, and each other. In the present, Aunt Ruth takes pregnant Cora on a journey through New York state, where, in the end, both timelines converge into a powerful climax. Mr. Splitfoot is a ghost story about motherhood, family, and faith.
Though, right now, we aren’t on a physical journey, we are traveling through something fantastically unique to our timeline and, like Cora, we will learn more about ourselves and our mission.
--Marshal Zeringue