September 30, 2005  SELINSGROVE, ( Pa. ) – Author Tom Bailey, associate professor of English and creative writing at Susquehanna University, will soon celebrate the release of his first novel, The Grace That Keeps This World . The novel, based on a tragic hunting accident in upstate New York where Bailey held his first teaching assignment, was accepted for publication by Random House's Crown Publishing Group, under the imprint of Shaye Areheart Books, earlier this year. The novel will be released Tuesday, Oct. 18. The hardcover release will be followed by an audio version of the book and is also available as an e-book. On Sunday, Oct. 30, Bailey will read from the novel in Susquehanna University 's Degenstein Center Theater. The reading begins at 8:30 p.m., and is free and open to the public. Bailey first heard about the hunting accident in a radio report. A father had accidentally shot and killed his son on the first day of buck season. When he saw what he'd done, he turned the gun on himself. Deeply affected, Bailey wrote a short story based on what he'd heard. “Snow Dreams,” originally published in DoubleTake magazine and later included in his first collection of short stories, Crow Man (Etruscan Press, 2003), went on to win a prestigious Pushcart Prize. However, long after the story was written, the tragedy of the incident stayed with Bailey, and he began thinking about the survivors of the tragedy – family members, friends and the small hunting community that became known in the novel as Lost Lake . These musings turned what began as a heartrending short story into a saga of community loss. Alternately narrated by members of the Hazen family and their neighbors living in the heart of upstate New York 's Adirondack country, The Grace That Keeps This World , brings to light the shared values that sustain human relationships. Bailey credits the tender sense of place and community loss created in the novel to the town he, his wife, Sarah, and three children call home. “Living in a small town offered me a way to understand the community of Lost Lake . It helped to inform my sense of their loss,” Bailey says. “A death in a community like Selinsgrove affects everyone, not just the family of the persons involved. We're inextricably tied to one another, as are the Hazens and their neighbors in Lost Lake . In such a tight knit community even a single death ripples out and out, touching every single person in one way or another,” Bailey says. Publishers Weekly says the novel “has the validity of deeply felt truths and characters who are bound and motivated by a love that arches the chasm of divergent ambitions and desires.” Critically acclaimed author Tom Perotta calls The Grace That Keeps This World “a haunting, sharply observed novel about a family struggling to live in harmony with each other, their neighbors and the natural world.” “In the lyrical, crystalline prose of a master stylist, Tom Bailey has written a book that will break your heart and linger in your mind long after you put it down,” Perotta says. Prior to joining the faculty of Susquehanna University in 1999, Bailey taught in the Expository Writing Program at Harvard University . His work has earned him a Newhouse Award from the John Gardner Foundation and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for fiction. It has been anthologized in New Stories from the South and been noted in The Best American Short Stories . In addition to Crow Man and The Grace That Keeps This World , Bailey has published two instructional books with Oxford University Press, On Writing Short Stories and The Short Story Writer's Companion . He is a regular contributor to The Writer magazine and is currently working on his third novel, tentatively titled Sunny Hills . Bailey's second novel, Cotton Song, will be published by Random House in the fall of 2006. Contact: Victoria Kidd 570-372-4119 #vk#0951#