The Sheltering

"An extraordinary and entertaining novel, "The Sheltering" is highly recommended for personal reading lists and community library Contemporary Fiction collections."—Midwest Book Review (Willis M. Buhle)
"The Sheltering signifies a new era for the tradition where the South, with all its baggage, has merged with the whole of America. Set primarily in central Florida, "The Sheltering" is a literary thriller in the vein of Jim Harrison or Robert Stone. Two alternating storylines tell a complex story of war, violence and the possibility of spiritual regeneration."—Richmond (Va.) Times Dispatch




The Sheltering by Mark Powell, Bronze Medal winner for General Fiction in the 2014 Florida Book Awards
The Sheltering by Mark Powel, Bronze Medal winner for Contemporary Fiction in the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards
"The Sheltering is Powell's best novel to date. The subtleties he imbues into his characters make for an engaging read that, once you start, is hard to stop. The smoothness of prose proves that Powell knows what he is doing. There is no doubt about it, Powell has established himself as a voice not only of Appalachia, but of all contemporary American literature."—Southern Literary Review




"Powell is an accomplished story-teller, one whose strong narrative gift and vivid prose style kept this reader enthralled for every one of the book's three hundred pages." —Willard Manus (Lively-arts.com)
"The Sheltering further secures Mark Powell's place as one of the best American novelists of his generation."—Ron Rash, author of Above the Waterfall
"Everything's going to hell in the literary village these days except this one true thing—our novelists, these past few years, have delivered us into a Golden Age of American writing, and



Mark Powell's unforgettable The Sheltering is further evidence of this redemptive phenomenon in the post-9/11 world. The Sheltering is the work of a story-teller at the height of his power."—Bob Shacochis, author of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
"In The Sheltering, Mark Powell has laid bare our busted and war-ravaged cores. We recognize our own lives in the precision of his renderings. It is as if he's seen it all somehow from on high, drone-weary and waiting on that whirling God. With fierce wisdom and bold honesty, Mark Powell has written a hell of book."—Glenn Taylor, author ofThe Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart
"If, as Marilynne Robinson has said, 'anything that is written compassionately and perceptively probably satisfies every definition of religious,' then Mark Powell's The Sheltering is a deeply religious book. In this, his fourth novel, Powell embraces the broken world as he finds it, in all of its contradictions, its horrors, its wonders. This is an author whose sense of awe is palpable and one whose superb prose and remarkable narrative prowess will be celebrated as he reaches an ever-widening audience."—Pete Duval, author of Rear View: Stories
"In masterful prose, Mark Powell's brilliant new novel, The Sheltering, explores the lives of a handful of people who are trying in various ways to find either meaning or escape in a post-2007 America that is rapidly losing any claim to greatness through, among other things, senseless wars and financial disasters. It is an amazing achievement."—Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time