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A Long Way Down: A Novel in Ten Stories

by Rick Hoffman

Celebrity chef Claude Isaac has raised his twin sons, Jake and Sawyer, to be elite chefs just like their old man. Now on his deathbead, he prepares to hand over the reins to Sawyer, while his wife Reba, a ruthless corporate attorney, plots to install Jake against Claude’s will. Ambition and deception threaten family bonds in this modern retelling of the biblical story of the sons of Isaac.

Eleanor DeBray’s family has been a part of her town’s history since nearly its founding. After inheriting The Boulevardier from her father, Miss Eleanor has managed to keep the historic hotel thriving, but as she tries to grow her family’s legacy, she finds herself opposed by a higher power. When she fights back with a different power altogether, even the Church can’t stand in her way.

Brett Callahan was born on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, but his family moved north when Brett and his brother were still boys. Now in the wake of a family tragedy, Brett must return to the place of his birth, chasing demons he is not prepared to find and rekindling interest in long-forgotten acts of unspeakable violence.

These and other tales make up A Long Way Down, a novel-in-stories whose characters slide into one another’s lives as they wrestle with forces greater than themselves. Port Butler, Louisiana, boasts a colorful population of cooks, musicians, voodoo conjure men, and more. The town and its kaleidoscopic history serve as the backdrop for this collection of ten interconnected stories of grief, ambition, curiosity, healing, and hope.

Rick Hoffman

Rick Hoffman is the author of the novels A Long Way Down: A Novel in Ten Stories (2024), Seven-Sided Son of a Bitch (2022) and The Devils That Haunt You (2016), as well as the short story collection, The Broken Places (2019) and a fully-annotated edition of The Great Gatsby for students and teachers. He was born in Pennsylvania, raised in Mississippi and Louisiana, and he currently lives in New York, where he teaches English and mythology at a nationally recognized Blue Ribbon high school. His fiction has appeared in Driftwood Press, The Tishman Review, Wraparound South, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Edify Fiction, Medusa’s Laugh Press, Flash Fiction Magazine and Entropy Magazine. He was a 2017 Best of the Net nominee for his short story “Biyanî,” about a Yazidi woman fleeing genocide in Northern Iraq.