Set in Central America and in middle Tennessee, Barry Kitterman’s debut novel gives us two intertwined stories: In the first, Tanner Johnson, nearing midlife, has left his pregnant wife and taken a job as a baker, working nights, trying to avoid a shadowy presence that haunts him from the past. In the second, Tanner relives his painful experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Belize, where he taught at a boys’ reform school nearly a quarter century ago. Haunted by the past, he struggles to find the courage to accept his role as a husband and prospective father.

Barry Kitterman has lived and taught in Belize, China, Taiwan, Ohio, and Indiana. The fiction editor of Zone 3 Magazine, he has had stories published in many literary venues, including The Long Story, Cutbank, California Quarterly, and Carolina Quarterly. He currently teaches at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife Jill and his children Ted and Hannah.

“In The Baker’s Boy Barry Kitterman’s lean language, precise descriptions, and poignant vignettes justify comparisons to great expatriate novels like Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. He weaves a haunting domestic yarn into an electric novel charged with the suspense of impending revelation and grounded in the angst of good-hearted, damaged souls.” --David Bradley, author of The Chaneysville Incident

“You find out who you are in times of crisis. Almost always the discovery is not what you expected. The Baker’s Boy, like much of Joseph Conrad’s work, is about the pain of such revelation and its continuing effect on one’s life. A strong and haunting debut novel by a fine writer.” --Rick DeMarinis, author of The Year of the Zinc Penny

“The Baker’s Boy could be thought of as a Peace Corps novel on the Huck Finn/Moby Dick model—boy goes out into the world, finds difficulty—but that would ignore its particular excellences. Kitterman writes a fine quiet prose and presents us with idiosyncratic characters we learn to cherish and root for. A splendid work.” --William Kittredge, author of The Willow Field

“In The Baker’s Boy Barry Kitterman gives us a haunting of the most universal kind: the ghost is a man’s mortal past, which tears through the veil of memory to demand a reckoning. Tanner, like all of us, struggles to make a whole person out of his broken parts, and how he succeeds makes for a touching read.” --Monica Wood, author of Any Bitter Thing

“Not since Lord of the Flies has a book haunted me like this. With his heartbreaking story of the boys of Belize, Kitterman hits the writer’s sweet spot.” --Paula Wall, author of The Wilde Women

“Kitterman’s onto something good here.” --Steve Yarbrough, author of The End of California