“Crash Barry has Stephen King’s knack for dialogue and Carolyn Chute’s ability to lodge grit under your fingernails in just a few sentences, but he writes in a voice that’s solely his own,” says Brian Robbins in the rock ‘n roll magazine Glide. “This is the kind of storytelling that can only come from having been there. Don’t ask. Just read.” Brian Robbins, Glide
Failed Portland rocker Ben Franklin moves Down East with his poet wife to start a new life. Desperate for cash, Ben signs on for the Maine blueberry harvest where he's lured into a seamy world of sex and drugs that could lead to his downfall. Alternating between temptation and ecstasy, desperation and guilt, Ben discovers how quickly things can go wrong.
Crash Barry is also the author of the gritty memoir, Tough Island - True Stories from Matinicus, Maine.
"Novelist Crash Barry spirits you away on a reckless, drug-fueled, decidedly un-magical mystery tour of the easternmost county in the United States, a place of great scenic beauty paired with crushing economic hardship. Washington County is like no place else, and Barry nails it like no other writer...It’s as though he has invented a new micro-genre: fictional anthropology." Richard Grant, Down East
Crash Barry spent a decade as a print and radio reporter in Portland then moved all the way Down East in 2004 after receiving a writing fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission. Settling in Eastport, he quickly discovered that job opportunities were scarce, so he raked blueberries, which sparked the idea for a novel about the seedier side of life in Washington County, Maine.
“Crash Barry is a gatecrasher. He’s the guy at the party who somehow gets past the bouncer, steals the limelight, and surprises everyone by winning hearts and souls with tales of adventure and daring. Which is precisely what he’s done here… Some writers are stylists. Some are philosophers. Some are story tellers. Crash Barry is a story teller. And a good one.” Doug Bruns, The Bollard