The Hill
Set during the 1960s in a small town, The Hill swirls high school sports, young lust, and a forbidden student-teacher affair into a confrontation that divides a community.
The Hill was David Poyer’s first novel, written as an experiment at the very beginning of his career. It prefigured characters, settings, and the themes of ethical choice and personal quandaries he would develop though the many books that followed: the later Hemlock County novels, set in the same remote area of Pennsylvania, the widely popular Dan Lenson novels, the Tiller Galloway diving adventures, and the Civil War at Sea trilogy, along with scores of short stories and novellas.
Reedited for a modern audience, yet still awkward in places, THE HILL serves as a retrospective on the genesis of a writer, along with a timeless look into the soul of a sensitive, disabled young man struggling toward adulthood and self-knowledge.
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David Poyer
DAVID POYER was born in DuBois, Pennsylvania in 1949. He grew up in Brockway, Emlenton, and Bradford, and graduated from Bradford Area High School in 1967. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1971, and later received a master’s degree from George Washington University.
His active and reserve naval service included sea duty in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, and Pacific, and shore duty at the Pentagon, Fleet Training Center, Surface Warfare Development Group, Joint Forces Command, and in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. He retired from the Joint Forces Command as a captain, with the Defense Superior Service Medal as his highest award.
Poyer has taught or lectured at Annapolis, Flagler College, University of Pittsburgh, Old Dominion University, the Armed Forces Staff College, the University of North Florida, Christopher Newport University, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, and other institutions. He has been a guest on PBS’s “Writer to Writer” series and on Voice of America, and has appeared at the Southern Festival of Books and many other literary events. He taught for sixteen years in the Maslow MA/MFA in Creative Writing faculty at Wilkes University. He’s currently a fellow at the Virginia Center of Creative Arts and teaches at the Ossabaw Island Writers’ Retreat. He lives on Virginia’s Eastern Shore with novelist Lenore Hart.
Hemlock County
Hemlock County consists of five books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
