2023 Maxy Awards Winner

Stephen Detals played professional baseball before flaming out in whiskey-fueled catastrophe.

His father and grandfather killed themselves on their 39th birthdays. Stephen is 38. He battles alcoholism, abandonment, suicidal tendencies, and lethal family history to survive his impending birthday.

This novel chronicles the final eight days before Stephen Detals' 39th birthday. His relapse into addiction forces Stephen back to the Neches River and the Piney Woods of Southeast Texas. Detals returns home to face purported murderess and family matriarch, Rose Petal Detals, and unravel the secrets of the family and hometown he abandoned twenty years earlier.

Sojka's previous novels received glowing reviews and won awards. Still, those novels only paid the toll to guide him to this moment. The author nurtured his ability, to lay his soul bare, exposing his darkest secrets, raveled into the mysteries of 39.