The Volcano Keeper (excerpt)

The following excerpt is from Bradley Sides’ The Volcano Keeper, which releases from Regal House Press in October 2026. In this novella, a young boy named Charlie finds the trajectory of his life altered by a prophecy made by his grandfather and the subsequent emergence of a volcano on his family’s rural Alabama farmland. The volcano is a real, geologic formation that physically reshapes the landscape as much as it reshapes Charlie’s family and community. But it is also certainly supernatural, not only because it is out of place in the American South but also in its promise for the future. Over the course of many decades, Charlie tends to the volcano, waiting and watching for the volcano’s mystery to unfold.

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OCTOBER 1, 1962

The season’s first cool day arrives on time, and Ms. Cordelia has the classroom’s glass-paned windows open. Her hair is down, the ends flapping softly with the breeze. She is smiling, as usual.

“Wasn’t that lunch delicious,” she says to one child. “What a wonderful treat,” she says to another. Maybe referencing the batch of cookies given following their meal. Perhaps commenting on the day. 

She is gentle in her movements, weaving between the rows to the front of the room. She straightens pencils in holders and places bags in their temporarily forgotten cubbies. She doesn’t necessarily correct. She guides. Instructs. A woman who feels as if she lives her purpose daily in her job.

She is at the chalkboard, with a brand-new stick of yellow chalk in her hand. She clears her throat to announce the commencement of another lesson, and she begins.

Ms. Cordelia writes in cursive. Smooth. Straight. Perfect. As her hand lifts from the board and she points back with her index finger, the class says each word. 

“Mantle.”

“Core.” 

“Crust.”

“Lava.” 

She doesn’t yet explain what these terms mean, but she will soon enough. 

She whispers at the board between the pronunciation of each. “Very good,” she says. 

She provides this affirmation not for her students, but for herself, as a reminder of the good work she has done with these same children she has been with for the past two years, in third grade and now in the fourth. Her “chickadees,” she calls them privately. 

Charlie is on the classroom’s far side, over by the small glass-covered science cabinet that keeps the three microscopes, beakers, scales, singular Bunsen burner, hot plate, and full set of goggles. He stares out the window, watching the tractors take the round bales of hay away. 

His mouth moves along with his classmates, but he doesn’t utter even the tiniest hint of a sound. None of the words even register to him until Ms. Cordelia picks up her chalk from the board on the final term for the lesson. 

“Volcano,” the class says.

The strange sound catches Charlie’s attention, and he turns to the board. 

“Volcano.” He says it himself. Delayed, but confident.

“Yes, Charlie,” Ms. Cordelia says. “Good.”

She points to the board, and they all say it. “Volcano.”

She repeats and so do they. “Volcano.” 

Ms. Cordelia extends her arms as if she’s conducting an orchestra, and she begins. 

The class erupts. Loud. Giggling.

“Volcano!”

“Volcano!”

“Volcano!”

“Volcano!”

“Volcano!”

Ms. Cordelia loosens her arms and allows them to fall. She tilts back her head. Her hands sway up again and find a place to rest against the fabric covering her navel. She laughs harder than she has in weeks.

Charlie takes out his notebook, and he writes the word.

OCTOBER 5, 1962

It’s not the sun that wakes them. Instead, it’s the ground. It rumbles softly at first. As if it’s hungry. Or hurt. But it doesn’t find immediate comfort, so it expands. Bigger. Angrier. In the distance, a mixture of collisions and splits. Like a rock crashing. Or a tree falling. A hundred. A thousand. More.

The boys jump to their feet. But it’s already over. 

They are not scared, not after seeing the creation. 

Out in the pasture, lit by the morning’s first rays of light, is what Charlie believes to be that something special Clarence said would await the boy. 

“The peak’s above the clouds,” Charlie says, pointing.

The adults, minus one, come running from the back door. Their red eyes tell at least one thing for certain.

Excerpt from The Volcano Keeper published with permission from Regal House Publishing.

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An Interview with Bradley Sides by Denton Loving

Denton Loving: The writer Gurney Norman used to refer to his novel Divine Right’s Trip and brag that he was the first or only person to write a dragon into Appalachian literature. You’re the first Southern writer I know of to place a volcano in Alabama. The last time I checked, there are no active or dormant volcanoes in your state. So how did the central image within The Volcano Keeper come to you?

Bradley Sides: I traveled a long way from Alabama to find it. My wife has a goal of visiting all the US national parks before she hits 40, and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to tag along with her on most of her adventures. A couple of summers back, we checked Mount Rainier off her list. Seeing that volcano was one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring images I’ve ever seen. The volcano itself was towering like nothing I’ve glimpsed. After we left the park, we headed down to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, and there was one point where there was a volcano in just about every direction we looked. I felt like I was being haunted by volcanoes. I knew at that point that I had to have one in Alabama, so I put one in my home state the only way I could. 

DL: You’ve previously described yourself as a writer of weird/speculative/magical things, which aptly describes The Volcano Keeper as well as your past short story collections, Those Fantastic Lives and Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood. How do you see the speculative nature of your work in relation to the gothic nature of our great Southern writers? Do you feel that you’re continuing in a very Southern tradition? Or does your work push back on those traditions?

BS: I try to use magic to help tell the truth. In my reading of their work, I think the greats like O’Connor and Faulkner approached southern gothicism in a similar way. In particular, I love how O’Connor looked at religion. It was beautiful and ugly. It was complex and real. Grief is something I’m looking at all the time–that, monsters, and our connection to the land. It’s like I must show the ugliness and the beauty to get to the truth, and the fantastical allows me to uncover it. 

I like to think I’m continuing in that same tradition as those who have come before me. It’s important to me to respect the people and places I know (and have known and have read) and to learn from them all. At the same time, I also hope I’m doing something new. Like you mentioned earlier, there aren’t many Alabama-set volcano stories. I think Southern writing is always growing and expanding, and hopefully my little bit of magic set in rural worlds inspires some other up-and-coming writers. Maybe that volcano will, in a way, give them permission to give Alabama something more magical–something that makes readers uncover another layer of truth.

DL: The volcano has a supernatural role within the narrative, but it’s also part of your depiction of a very present natural world. In fact, Charlie’s relationship to the land may be as great or greater than any of his relationships with other people. Can you talk about your personal relationship with nature?

BS: I absolutely agree. Charlie loves the land, and I, too, love the land. I grew up on a cattle farm. We had ponds, creeks, gardens, and pastures. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, and they had gardens covering many, many acres. I was outside most of the time, either walking around or riding my four-wheeler. As an adult, I still find myself outside very often. I garden. I run. I also spend many hours a day just observing. I’m the kind of person who sits out in the shade and watches the birds, squirrels, and chipmunks. I look at the clouds. I count bumblebees and butterflies. Nature allows me to escape and to honestly feel a kind of peace that I can’t find elsewhere. I love it. I really love it.   

DL: I’d love to hear your thoughts on the novella as a form, and why you chose it for this narrative. And also about the series of vignettes that make up the novella. I really admire how the vignettes build upon each other. And yet, they sometimes feel more like prose poems to me, as opposed to successive chapters, because they are sometimes very brief snapshots. And there is often a large gap in time between one vignette and the next. But the language is so descriptive and powerful, especially in the shorter pieces, as if there’s something coiled there, ready to burst.

BS: I appreciate that, Denton. I’ve always preferred the short form as a reader and as a writer. One of the first books I learned to love on my own, and not as a student, is Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish. It’s told in vignettes, and I find that structure to be quite true to life–at least my own life. When I remember important moments, what I can recall are snippets of them. I’ve always wanted to tell a larger story in this kind of way. 

A couple of my favorite recent books are Margaret Renkl’s Late Migrations and Jesse Graves’ Merciful Days. With Renkl, I’ve read Late Migrations more than any book in my life, and I cry pretty much every time I close it. It has many, many super-short essays. The final essay, “Holy Holy Holy,” is only a few sentences, and it packs more emotion into it than probably anything I’ve read. It’s perfect. With Graves, Merciful Days has the same kind of impactful emotionality, and he achieves it through relatively short poems. In my own book, I really wanted to try and see what I can do with a similar kind of brevity. The vignettes felt right. 

I’m so glad you picked up on the prose poems feeling. I’ve been tinkering with some poetry. I think it’s what I want to try next. 

DL: In one of the blurbs for the book, George Singleton refers to Charlie’s “goodness” as a factor that will keep readers engaged. Dramatic events certainly happen throughout Charlie’s story. But Charlie maintains a sense of innocence throughout. I would go so far as to say that there’s a certain sweetness to the whole story. Did you consciously think about how to balance the novella’s tone in juxtaposition with some of the truly heart-rending events?

BS:  I did. To be honest, I tried very hard to find that balance. As I was writing, I knew the book’s contents were going to be pretty heavy with such a focus on death and grief, so I tried to make sure the different kinds of love came through strongly. The world is just so tough right now. I wanted to put out something that had a kind of sweetness to it. 

At the end of the day, I believe that love is what will help us get through our struggles, and I hope the book reflects that idea. 

DL: I mentioned Charlie’s relationship to nature and to land, but his relationship with his grandfather is foundational and is really the strongest engine driving The Volcano Keeper. How much of your relationship with your own grandfather informed this narrative and the creation of these characters?

BS: My grandfather, who we all called “Grandaddy,” was the wisest person I’ve known. He was also loving and gentle and smart and kind. I’ve never written about him before, and while the grandfather in The Volcano Keeper isn’t him, the character’s core very much comes from Grandaddy. My grandfather was known around the community for his watermelons. He grew so many and shared them with people all around. I wanted the character in the book to have that same watermelon interest as a nod to Grandaddy. 

If the character’s love wasn’t so strong (and if the other characters didn’t love him so strongly), I don’t think the narrative would really work. I’m lucky to have known that kind of love. And it’s because I knew it that I’m now able to understand the grief I write about. Grandaddy, and my relationship with him, is throughout this book.   

Interviewer Bio

Denton Loving’s third collection of poems is Feller, published by Mercer University Press. He is a co-founder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf. His fiction, poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including The Kenyon Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Ecotone. Visit his website at dentonloving.com.