Long Ago Last Summer

Long Ago Last Summer is a Southern Gothic gumbo part Flannery O'Connor, part Tennessee Williams with a dash of Delta blues. An array of unforgettable characters come alive on the page: village idiots, eccentric aunts, beloved dogs, and at least one serial killer, Donald 'Pee Wee' Gaskins. Moore's memoir embodies the profound paradoxes of Southern culture against a landscape dotted with antebellum plantations, shotgun shacks, suburban subdivisions, Pentecostal churches, and juke joints.

Praise for Wesley Moore's writing:

"Long Ago, Last Summer is, like life, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic, full of unforgettable characters whose power to hurt rivals their power to love. Wesley Moore is a child of the complicated South, and it's a joy to 'grow up and grow old' with this terrific writer. This collection is a 'guided tour of the haunted houses and cobwebbed attics' of his youth, but it's also the story of a man who discovers, through tragedy, that 'the world is a marvelous place, full of good, compassionate people."

- Lee Robinson, author of Lawyer for the Dog and Lawyer for the Cat.

"I found in these pages something of what Faulkner meant when he wrote, 'The past is never dead. It is not even the past.' Reading this book was like walking in the wind or swimming. I was touched at all points and conscious everywhere. I was also reminded of Huck Finn's raw wisdom when he said about his adventures, 'All of this is true and most of it happened.'"

- Chuck Sullivan, author of Zen Matchbox and The Juggler on the Radio.

A native South Carolinian, Wesley Moore III taught English at Porter-Gaud School in Charleston for 34 years before his retirement in 2019. Kirkus Reviews lauded his debut novel Today, Oh Boy as "a quietly sublime period piece" featuring "dazzling characters." An anthologized author, he has published in various literary journals and won several writing awards. Wesley lives with his wife Caroline and stepdaughter Brooks on Folly Beach, South Carolina.

He also publishes the blog 'You Do Hoodoo' (wlm3.com).