With his offbeat sense of humor and down-home Southern sensibility, James Whorton has been compared to luminaries such as John Kennedy Toole and Carson McCullers. He sharpens his cutting wit to a keen edge in Frankland, following the misadventures of a wannabe academic who goes hunting for a secret history and gets much more than he bargained for.

John Tolley is a bumbling college dropout who yearns to become a bowtie-wearing, pipe-smoking historian. When he hears that Andrew Johnson's lost papers may have been preserved by an heir in Tennessee, he grabs his tweed jacket and heads...

From prizewinning short story writer James Whorton, Jr., Approximately Heaven is a marvelously rambunctious debut novel about one hapless man's pursuit of happiness -- or at least another six-pack. Preferably both.
Don "Wendell" Brush is an unemployed 32-year-old Tennessee electrician who likes a few beers before lunch. Mary, his long-suffering wife, has decided to leave him, but Don, heartsick at the thought, beats her out the door. He reasons that if he leaves, Mary will have to stay behind in their ramshackle house to take care of their dog and cat. At least he'll know where...