Author Entertainment Series – Robert Gwaltney

Sing Down the Moon

Sixteen-year-old Leontyne Skye longs to escape Good Hope, a barrier island off the coast of Georgia—and the cursed birthright that binds her to it. For generations, the women of the Skye line have tended Damascus, an ancient fig tree whose siren song lures the dead across the river. The figs it bears are harvested to create Redemption, a drug that tethers the island to the dead, slowly consuming the Skye women from the inside out.

Leontyne’s mother, Eulalee, is already disappearing—memory, hair, teeth—into the salt-stung air. And Leontyne is unraveling too, since the accident known as Tribulation Day, when she lost her hand and all sense of who she was before. As her memories resurface in fractured pieces, and her childhood friends, Rebecca and Avery, twist truth to their own ends, Leontyne faces a cruel inheritance aiming to destroy her.

When Journey Wintergarden arrives, mysterious and magnetic, precarious relationships unravel, threatening to upend everything, derailing Leontyne’s plans to escape Good Hope. As desire, betrayal, and memory collide, the haints grow restless. Leontyne’s refusal to tend the tree means shattering the fragile balance between the living and the dead. Accepting her fate means becoming the Great Redeemer—and losing herself completely.

“Robert Gwaltney’s sophomore follow-up to The Cicada Tree is Southern Gothic at its finest.  With beautiful prose and an artist’s eye, his descriptions immerse the reader in the beauty and fairy-tale magic of coastal Georgia.  Characters who are wounded both physically and emotionally populate this story of family legacy and the price of betrayal. This is the perfect read for fans of Southern fiction and magical realism and for those who enjoy savoring every word.”

– Karen White, New York Times bestselling author of That Last Carolina Summer

Meet the Author

Robert Gwaltney, a recipient of the 2022 Pat Conroy Writers Residency, was named 2023 Georgia Author of the Year for his debut novel, The Cicada Tree. He resides in Atlanta Georgia where he is an active member of the Atlanta literary community serving as a board member for Broadleaf Writers Association. Robert’s work has appeared in such publications as Southbound Magazine, Southern Literary Review, The Blue Mountain Review, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. His forthcoming novel, Sing Down The Moon, which has been awarded the Somerset Award for Literary and Contemporary Fiction, will be published by Mercer University Press in the Spring of 2026.

“There is so much to admire in Robert Gwaltney’s new novel—how it is both intensely Southern yet also reminiscent of the magical realism of writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez; its appealing heroine caught between the demands of her community (both the living and the dead) and the desires of her own heart; its delightful blend of colloquial and lyric language—all of which make Sing Down the Moon a remarkable achievement.”

—Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of Serena and The Caretaker