TITLE 13

Heald Brown might be responsible for the loss of highly classified TITLE 13 government documents—and may have hopelessly lost himself as well. Since leaving his home in Detroit for Chicago during the recession, Heald teeters anxiously between despondency and bombastic sarcasm, striving to understand a country gone mad while clinging to his quixotic roots.

Trying to deny the frightening course of his alcoholism, Heald struggles with his mounting paranoia, and his relationships with his concerned family and dying grandmother, all while juggling a budding office romance at the US government’s Chicago Regional Census Center. Heald’s reality soon digresses into farcical absurdity, fevered isolation, and arcane psychological revelation, hilarious though redoubtable in nature. Meanwhile the TITLE 13 secrets remain at large, haunting each character and tangling the interwoven threads of Heald’s life, as the real question looms: Is it the TITLE 13 information that Heald has lost, or his sanity?

About the Author

Michael Ferro Points in Case – Born and bred in Detroit, Michael has lived, worked, and written throughout the American Midwest. He was named as a finalist by Glimmer Train for their New Writers Award, won the Jim Cash Creative Writing Award for Fiction, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Editorial Reviews

“Affecting and inventively funny… Ferro's work is an eclectic me?lange.”
–Kirkus Reviews

“TITLE 13 is a darkly comic story for our time, a mélange of Barton Fink, Office Space, and Kafka, a novel that examines our alienation from one another and increasingly, our own country. Michael A. Ferro is a young writer on the rise.”
—Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and The Hearts of Men

“A wonderful experience and a terribly compelling character study… sometimes fun, sometimes dark. For a first-time novelist, (Ferro is) very knowing about the emotional territory of life. A very, very ambitious book.”
—Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune

“Michael A. Ferro's grand first novel churns fiction with a striking realism, and in his doing so, Ferro has successfully brought the Midwest back onto the literary map.”
—Hunger Mountain

“TITLE 13‘s protagonist finds himself in some very dark places; partly due to vodka, and also because of the Orwellian nature of his job working for the government. And things do get a little 1984-ish…”
–Stateside, Michigan Radio NPR

“Ferro somehow manages to thread together the delicate themes of darkness and humor, no easy task, to create a novel that I did not want to end. A perfect book for this not-so-perfect age.”
—Mike Sacks, New York Times bestselling author of Poking a Dead Frog

“TITLE 13 proves that even when society fractures, meaning can be drawn from the chaos. Michael A. Ferro writes with heart, tenderness, and wit. An impressive debut!”
—Davy Rothbart, contributor to NPR's This American Life and author of My Heart Is an Idiot

“Rich in dialogue and description with a delicate balance of foreboding and satirical humor, TITLE 13 serves to caution all of us in the trust of our hearts, our memories, and the supposed security guaranteed by government and technology in the hands of fallible citizens.”
–The Coil Book Review

“With fierce wit and precision, Ferro paints a riveting portrait of a mind unraveling—ravaged by addiction, and rattled by the paranoia lodged in the beating heart of our government and seeping out into society. The gripping mystery driving TITLE 13, and the deeply troubled yet often hilarious psychology of the novel's protagonist, are mesmerizing and brilliantly rendered. Ferro is a writer in possession of rare and unique talent—wise, agile, and bold.”
—Emma Smith-Stevens, author of The Australian

“Ferro has given us an insightful, tightly-crafted, and wickedly cutting novel that forces us all to think about the things we don't want to think about. But it's just such a funny story, too. The only times I stopped laughing were to panic and cry a little.”
—Brian Boone, Splitsider

“In the giddy, hilarious TITLE 13, Michael A. Ferro serves as an after-hours tour guide to the monkeyhouse, uncannily adept at finding the places where absurdity lurks like some recalcitrant mold in the corners and corridors of contemporary life. He nails so much here—our paranoia, our obsessions, modern Chicago, the conspiracy-heavy air we seem compelled to breathe in 2018—but also the vestiges of what can feel like our last stands for privacy, inwardness, humanity.”
—Tim Horvath, author of Understories

“By turns earnest and ironic, also paranoiac, alcoholic, and elegiac, TITLE 13 is a critical excerpt pulled straight from the ailing heart of Middle America.”
—Jay Baron Nicorvo, author of The Standard Grand

“It's impossible for even the most concerned citizen not to find continuous insights, hilarious moments, and a resonating force within TITLE 13. It's this ability to blend concern, horror, and insight that keeps Ferro's story the perfect example of a crash in the making, mirroring modern events from a delightfully fresh series of changing perspectives. Readers who enjoy stories of political blundering and irony should run, not walk, to TITLE 13: a hard-hitting story wrapped in a unique voice that makes it nearly impossible to put down.”
–Midwest Book Review

More Book Details

• Paperback: 398 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Square Editions (February 1, 2018)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1941861466
• ISBN-13: 978-1941861462
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.9 x 8 inches