The 14th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards have announced their winners! We would like to congratulate Jeffrey Blount and James Hill for their big wins, as well as Perry Miller, Stefanie Naumann, Ralph Steinke, and Julie MacNeil for being named finalists!
Winners:
Jeff Blount—African-American fiction, for The Emancipation of Evan Walls
James Hill—Men’s Health, for Midpoint: Manhood, Midlife, and Prostate Cancer
Finalists:
Tadeusz Haska, Stefanie Naumann—Business, New non-fiction, for How Languages Saved Me
James Hill—Cancer, for Midpoint: Manhood, Midlife, and Prostate Cancer
Jeff Blount—Literary Fiction, for The Emancipation of Evan Walls
Perry Miller—Medical Thriller, for Lethal Injection
Ralph Steinke—Military non-fiction, for Next Mission
Julie MacNeil—Self-help motivation, for The Fifty-Year Secret
Check out the other winners here.
The Emancipation of Evan Walls by Jeffrey Blount
EVAN WALLS IS TERRIFIED by the birth of his first child because he doesn’t want her to suffer the isolation he had as a child. Seeing his torment, his wife, Izzy, prods him to explain. He tells of being a black child growing up in the racially charged 1960s. Inspired to overcome the racism and class status imposed on blacks, he dreams of a life bigger than that lived by most everyone he knows in the small Virginia town of Canaan. He is resented by friends and family for desiring a life better than theirs. Among the smartest in his class, Evan becomes a target of white kids threatened by the forced integration of their schools. Caught in a crossfire of hate from whites and his own people, who question whether he is black enough, Evan is often alone and bewildered. Only the love of his great grandmother, Mama Jennie, and his mentor, Bojack, keeps him on track. Together, they help Evan find perspective and peace.
Midpoint: Manhood, Midlife, and Prostate Cancer by James A. Hill
As a healthy 56-year-old marketing executive, Jim Hill never saw stage-3 prostate cancer coming.Yet, in early 2018 he found himself on his back for six hours, going through a laparoscopic radical prostatectomy. His surgeon ventured into the tangle of tissue, nerves, and blood vessels in his groin to remove his prostate, seminal vesicles, lymph nodes, and some surrounding tissue. The good news was Jim’s cancer seemed to be eradicated. The bad news was the experience would leave him altered physically and psychologically, as a man, a husband, and a father. Written for the 2.9 million men who are living with prostate cancer today–and for their loved ones, caregivers, and health care providers–Midpoint candidly explores the gritty, often embarrassing realities of prostate cancer and its impact on middle-aged male identity with clarity, compassion, and, ultimately, hope.
