Cloud 8

“Mad, fascinating, and really quite moving…a splendid start for storywriter Bailie…”– Kirkus Reviews

“…tender and introspective…”—Boston’s Weekly Dig

Advertising copywriter James Broadhurst is killed in a car accident and finds himself floating towards the great white light. Instead of finding angels and puffy white clouds, he discovers an afterlife that consists of free beer, a mysterious roommate who won’t answer any of his questions and to his astonishment, a job! As James moves through this “heaven” (or hell?), where half the population bears a bizarre and uncanny resemblance to Abraham Lincoln and where his own funeral is the movie of the week, he begins to yearn for something more meaningful than what he had in life, and what he now has in death.

Debut novelist Grant Bailie has created a richly imagined landscape where the heights of fantasy and the depths of sorrow meet to form a witty and touching rumination on the meaning of life, and the meaning of death.

Grant Bailie lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his second wife and his first children every other weekend and holidays. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Exquisite Corpse and numerous other print and online journals.