Kentucky author Wes Blake’s award-winning debut novel “Pineville Trace” was inspired by our little corner of the world and features several well-known local sites including the Bell County Forestry Camp, Cumberland Gap and the cities of Pineville and Middlesboro.

“Pineville Trace” won the Etchings Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Feathered Quill Debut Author Book Award. Deep South Magazine featured it on their 2024-2025 reading list. The book was published by the University of Indianapolis’ Etchings Press.

Pineville Trace tells the story of a former revival preacher serving time for fraud who walks away from an Eastern Kentucky prison in the 1970s. He follows a stray cat named Buffalo as he tries to reconcile himself with his past.

SmokeLong Quarterly says, “This is an utterly compelling read. Blake’s prose is sparse and simple, whose short, almost broken, sentences sing with enormous power,” and Heavy Feather Review calls Blake’s debut book “an introspective, haunting tale that remains with us.”

Sub-header: About Wes Blake

Pulitzer Prize finalist author Lee Martin called him a “writer to watch.” His work has appeared in Electric Literature, Los Angeles Review of Books, storySouth, and Louisiana Literature Journal, among others, and he holds an MFA from the Bluegrass Writers Studio. Wes lives in Nonesuch, Kentucky with his wife and cats, where they’ve planted over 100 trees. You can learn more at wesblake.com.

In a recent interview with Matthew Sydney Parsons for Heavy Feather Review, Blake spoke about Pineville Trace.

“In the first chapter of the book, Frank Russet  sees a vision of the town Pineville, Kentucky, after seeing a sign for it along the highway. And he imagines the outline of the town and a house hidden by pines,” he said. “Much of the rest of the book follows Frank as he tries to find his dream vision in the real world—his dream cabin surrounded by pines. Hidden from the world. This is a dream of sanctuary. A place of refuge and safety.”

The book includes a chapter called “KY-190” that is Blake’s reflection on a recording he took of himself about the writing of the book.

“I always tell the same story. Over and over. It’s the story about getting what you want. And the story about not getting what you want. It’s the only story I know,” he says.

The novella-in-flash tells a parallel story like a photo and its negative. Blake’s narrative follows similar characters and situations as Frank is rewriting over his past to make sense of it. Following the Buffalo—or, at least, a cat named Buffalo—Frank Russet mulls over his past in a layered narrative that would lead you deeper into the wilderness with no way out. Blake’s debut novella plays with time, begging the reader to follow along and trust the ride. Frank is a protagonist filled with guilt, searching for meaning in the forest with his cat, Buffalo.

“[Frank] had become an actor in his own life. Reading a script.”

As Frank traverses the shadowy edges of society, he encounters remnants of his former self, forcing him to confront his deepest regrets and desires. Blake’s haunting prose captures the essence of a man on the brink of transformation, urging readers to ponder the thin line between redemption and damnation.

“Pineville Trace” is available in paperback for $12.00 from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other retailers and is also available as an e-book or Kindle and as an audiobook.