A young man struggles to find himself in the midst of tragedy in William H. Strickland's moving debut novel, "Hemingway Lies and the Search for Sam."

There is a whispered rumor that circulates throughout the small southern town implicating one of the blue-blood residents in a secret affair with a well-known writer, and branding her child, Hawken Turner, as the illegitimate son of Ernest Hemingway.

Hawken dismisses the rumors and ignores the talk until a tragic accident claims the life of the one person he cannot bare to lose. Desperate to numb the pain, he descends into a life of...