Mark Powell's "The Sheltering," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Sheltering by Mark Powell.

The entry begins:

Few things expose one’s utter ignorance of pop culture like being asked who might play the movie roles from your novel, in my case, The Sheltering. The good news, for me, at least, is that the novel is sprawling, with a large cast of characters so perhaps any mistakes in casting can be overcome with sheer volume. The novel follows two plot lines that slowly intersect until each can only be understood in the light of the other. In the first, Luther Redding flies a drone over Afghanistan from deep within a Tampa Air Force Base. When he dies in a sudden flash of light, erased as quickly and irrevocably as any target, his wife Pamela and daughters Lucy and Katie are left to deal with the aftershocks. In the second plot line, two brothers, Bobby and Donny Rosen, set off on a nihilistic road trip, eight kilos of coke in tow.

At least casting Luther’s part allows me another opportunity to lament the passing of Philip Seymour Hoffman, without question, at least to my mind, the finest actor of his generation. But with Hoffman out of the question, I think I’ll turn to...[read on]

Learn more about The Sheltering at the University of South Carolina Press website.

The Page 69 Test: The Sheltering.

My Book, The Movie: The Sheltering.

--Marshal Zeringue