{"id":14234,"date":"2025-05-30T16:51:03","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T20:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/?page_id=14234"},"modified":"2025-05-30T16:51:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T20:51:06","slug":"michael-c-white","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/michael-c-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael C. White"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

When I was a boy, much like Lyman, the narrator of Skunktown<\/em>, I used to accompany my father to whatever jobsite he was working at. When I was very little, he took me as a form of babysitting, but as I grew up I began to function as a carpenter\u2019s helper\u2014sawing boards, toeing nails, mixing concrete, holding sheetrock, acting as a go-for. It was hard and dirty work, but it taught me two things: the pride of working with my hands, and the fact that I didn\u2019t want to do that for a living. But the really important lesson that my father taught me, which would become both my vocation and my avocation, was the art of telling stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After work, like Walt Polly in the novel, my father would take me to some bar\u2014or in his vernacular, a ginmill. My father was known in every ginmill within a twenty-mile radius of home. As soon as he entered, someone would call to him, \u201cWhat are you drinking?\u201d And then someone else would plead, \u201cTell us a story.\u201d He\u2019d tell stories as long as the drinks kept coming, and the more he drank the more wild and outrageous the stories became. In fact, he was renowned for his story-telling. Tall tales of the big woods of northern New England, where he grew up on the family farm. They were Bunyanesque, or should I say, Homeresque, filled with drama and heroics, of derring-do and near deaths, of O Henry endings and backwoods ribald humor. As I sat nearby in a booth, I listened captivated, but even more so, I noted how the rough, working-class men seated at the bar around him were similarly captivated by his stories. Though my childhood wasn\u2019t filled with books or poetry\u2014the usual prerequisites for an author–what I felt when watching my father do his schtick was that one day I, too, wanted to be a storyteller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of all my novels, Skunktown<\/em> is the most autobiographical. Not so much in the narrative as in the characters that populate it. Similar to Lyman and the old man, I spent a great deal of time in my father\u2019s company, working with him, riding in his run-down truck, listening to his stories. Besides carpentry, I learned early on that he was a man of contradictions. Uneducated but well-read, someone who could be kind and generous, but also a man angry and bitter at a world he felt had cheated him somehow. He was a racist, too. But his racism gave way to a larger guiding principle that said if a man, any man, worked hard, kept his nose clean, and treated him fairly, then he was all right in his book. For example, he used to take me with him to a small hamlet where African-Americans lived (much like Skunktown), a place set apart from our otherwise all-white New England town. There he would buy used car parts from the black owner of the junkyard. They would talk and laugh together as friends, and many times my father would share his bottle of booze with the man in a kind of blue-collar camaraderie. My father showed respect and admiration for the man, which belied his otherwise bigoted feelings. And one of his closest friends was a black man named Scottie. I\u2019d accompany my father to Scottie\u2019s house where the two men behaved as equals. When I look back on those days, it was this contradiction at the very heart of racism that I wanted to capture in the novel. I had in mind To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>, but unlike Atticus and Scout, who were paragons of virtue and strength, I wanted to start with a very flawed character in Lyman\u2019s father and have the young boy be forced to struggle with his own morality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Skunktown<\/em>, I am the author of seven previous novels: Soul Catcher<\/em> (Harper Collins), a Booksense and Historical Novels Review selection; A Brother\u2019s Blood<\/em> (Harper), a New York Times Book Review <\/em>Notable Book and an Edgar Award Finalist; The Blind Side of the Heart<\/em> (Harper), A Dream of Wolves<\/em> (Harper), Beautiful Assassin<\/em>, a Connecticut Book Award winner; and The Garden of Martyrs<\/em> (St. Martins), which was made into an opera of the same name. Resting Places<\/em> was runner-up for 2024 Best General Fiction award from the Indie Authors Project. I\u2019ve also published a collection of stories called Marked Men <\/em>(University of Missouri Press). I was the founding editor of the yearly fiction anthology American Fiction<\/em> as well as the journal Dogwood<\/em>. I also founded and was the director of Fairfield University’s MFA for many years. I received my Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Denver, and taught college for nearly forty years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I currently live on an old horse farm on the Connecticut shoreline with my wife Reni, a breast cancer radiologist, and our two Labrador Retrievers, Lincoln and Falstaff (I used to teach Shakespeare). Next to the horse barn, I renovated a former chicken coop into a tiny cabin, where I love to hide away and write. The dogs and I hike through the woods surrounding the horse farm daily, rain or shine, and marvel at the gifts from nature \u2013 the fiddlehead ferns popping up in springtime, the bard owl hooting late into the evenings, the red-tailed hawk nesting in a big beech tree, or a fox running through the woods. When I\u2019m not writing, I enjoy working in my vegetable garden, reading contemporary fiction, and listening to classical music. My wife and I also love to travel and explore global cultures and cuisines from all over Europe, South Africa, Argentina and, most recently, India. We usually squeeze in some hiking wherever we go, with some favorite trails in Newfoundland (try the Skerwink trail on the Bonavista Peninsula if you go), the Isle of Skye, the Andes, the Rockies, and Maine (great trails all around Moosehead Lake where my first book, A Brother\u2019s Blood<\/em>, is set). Finally, I am inveterate watcher of BritBox crime mysteries and devoted fan of UCONN Women\u2019s Basketball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regal House Publishing is proud to bring you Michael C. White’s Skunktown<\/em> in 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a boy, much like Lyman, the narrator of Skunktown, I used to accompany my father to whatever jobsite he was working at. When I was very little, he took me as a form of babysitting, but as I grew up I began to function as a carpenter\u2019s helper\u2014sawing boards, toeing nails, mixing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-14234","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9DpGh-3HA","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9465,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/mindy-friddle\/","url_meta":{"origin":14234,"position":0},"title":"Mindy Friddle","author":"Jaynie","date":"May 16, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Photo credit: Vito Cubelo I was born in Greenville, South Carolina and I come from a family that has lived in the Carolinas and in the Southern Appalachian Mountains since before the Revolutionary War. I moved around a lot as a child\u2014my father was in the Army\u2014and we lived in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/MindyFriddle-scaled.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/MindyFriddle-scaled.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/MindyFriddle-scaled.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/MindyFriddle-scaled.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5958,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/deirdre-fagan\/","url_meta":{"origin":14234,"position":1},"title":"Deirdre Fagan","author":"Jaynie","date":"November 3, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Deirdre Fagan is a widow, wife, and mother of two. Born in New York City, she spent her early years in a hamlet in Suffolk County, Long Island, jumping waves in the Atlantic. Shortly after her parents divorced, she was uprooted to Arizona at the age of nine. She then\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Deirdre-Fagan-SQ-NV-1-of-1-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Deirdre-Fagan-SQ-NV-1-of-1-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Deirdre-Fagan-SQ-NV-1-of-1-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Deirdre-Fagan-SQ-NV-1-of-1-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Deirdre-Fagan-SQ-NV-1-of-1-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6467,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/mimi-herman\/","url_meta":{"origin":14234,"position":2},"title":"Mimi Herman","author":"Jaynie","date":"February 8, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"As a child, I felt more comfortable with books than with people. But in fourth grade I met a teacher, Miss Stevens, who actually saw me\u2014the first adult outside my home who seemed able to do so\u2014and who taught me to write poetry. A lot of people learn poetry in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Mimi Herman","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Mimi_Herman_Amboise_Headshot.jpg?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Mimi_Herman_Amboise_Headshot.jpg?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Mimi_Herman_Amboise_Headshot.jpg?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Mimi_Herman_Amboise_Headshot.jpg?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":14766,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/larry-bingham\/","url_meta":{"origin":14234,"position":3},"title":"Larry Bingham","author":"Jaynie","date":"April 30, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"When my twin brother died at 27 of an accidental overdose, my stoic father cried. The sound he made was nothing like I had ever heard. It was an animal cry, primal in its pain, and I will never forget it. I started writing Minerville, my debut novel, to try\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Larry Bingham","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Larry-Bingham-2026_20_bw.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Larry-Bingham-2026_20_bw.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Larry-Bingham-2026_20_bw.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Larry-Bingham-2026_20_bw.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Larry-Bingham-2026_20_bw.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3360,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/peter-schmitt\/","url_meta":{"origin":14234,"position":4},"title":"Peter Schmitt","author":"Jaynie","date":"June 10, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I don\u2019t know if I was destined to become a writer, but I was blessed to grow up in a home full of books, with a mother who taught me to read and write at an early age.\u00a0 I was four when I wrote and illustrated my first stories\u2014imitative of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Peter Schmitt, author of Goodbye Apostrophe, a poetry collection from Regal House Publishing","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Peter_gray.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Peter_gray.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Peter_gray.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4614,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/isaac-knapper\/","url_meta":{"origin":14234,"position":5},"title":"Isaac Knapper","author":"Jaynie","date":"February 28, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Isaac Knapper is currently the head trainer of the Crescent City Boxing Gym in New Orleans, LA. Isaac has a deep passion to help young kids avoid the psychological beat down and suffering that he experienced in the Department of Corrections. To that end, he volunteers to mentor and coach\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Isaac_bw.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Isaac_bw.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Isaac_bw.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Isaac_bw.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14236,"href":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14234\/revisions\/14236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}