In THE MORNING SIDE OF THE HILL, Ezra E. Fitz’ debut novella, he asks readers: What if you anted up and kicked in everything you had on a belief, a hope, a dream, on faith, and you lost? This is one of the questions facing Willie and Mo, the two insecure, incomplete protagonists that was inspired by – and is an homage to – William Faulkner’s classic novel The Wild Palms. Like Faulkner’s novel, it unfolds in two parallel stories told in alternating chapters that subtly illuminate one another. In the first, set in uptown Manhattan, a disillusioned graduate student who’s just a little too familiar with the neighborhood drug dealer and a lonely woman appears doomed to a disastrous end. In the second, set in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a soft-spoken parolee looking to reassemble the broken pieces of his former life meets a young, withered yet surprisingly ebullient cancer patient that eventually puts his one final chance at freedom at risk. As you read on, the twin tales gather like a storm to an exhilarating ferocity, culminating in a violent flood of passions that none of the characters can control, and which threatens to drown them all. Faulkner fans may think they know what the end holds for these four characters, but rest assured . . . the culmination of THE MORNING SIDE OF THE HILL exposes an unexpected coincidence that Faulkner may have hinted at but never fully explored.