“A winning story that is hard to put down."

Scroll down to the Teasers, Excerpts, and Commentaries section for some opening passages (or just click here).

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“The delivery of Dean’s misadventures and literary pursuits assumes an unusual form that invites readers into his perceptions and experiences from its opening lines.”

– D. Donovan, Sr. Reviewer, Midwest Book Review 

The Kindle e-book is available June 01 for pre-order, ahead of its Monday June 15 release. The paperback will be available Friday June 12 to order for delivery on (or even before!) publication day.

“What works best here is Dean’s voice. He is funny, self-lacerating, observant, and grandiose enough to stay interesting.”

– Kyle Eaton, Manhattan Book Review [rated 4.5/5]

Manhattan Book Review will publish its review of The Accidental Future of Dean Harris.

Kyle Eaton at Manhattan Book Review loves Dean Harris!

Rating the book 4 1/2 out of 5, here's some of what he had to say: 

“Derek McFadden’s The Accidental Future of Dean Harris is a novel about artistic ambition that understands how humiliating ambition can feel from the inside. Dean is an unpublished writer, an underpaid literary gatekeeper, a man with cerebral palsy, and the sort of person who keeps building his life around the conviction that the real version of himself is still just ahead. McFadden gives him a nonlinear six-part structure to move through therapy sessions, family history, romantic memory, professional frustration, grief, and the stubborn hope that a future self might still arrive. That structure sounds fussy on paper, but it suits a book obsessed with revision, not only of manuscripts, but of the stories people tell about their own lives.

What works best here is Dean’s voice. He is funny, self-lacerating, observant, and grandiose enough to stay interesting. The novel gets real mileage out of his relationships, especially with Claire, his partner in both emotional survival and the doomed-sounding bakery-bookstore dream Treats and Tomes, and with the older literary champion Charles Corning, who keeps pushing Dean to stop being afraid of the truth in his own work. McFadden is also sharp on the small abrasions of literary culture: unpaid labor, agent rejections, ego disguised as mentorship, and the way talent can curdle into self-protection...

Readers will find this is a smart and emotionally candid novel about art, disability, love, and the dangerous comfort of waiting for your life to begin."

Diane Donovan, senior. reviewer at Midwest Book Review, enjoyed finding out about The Accidental Future of Dean Harris.

"The Accidental Future of Dean Harris is a novel presented in vignettes about a writer who searches for and achieves literary success – only to find that his heart’s desire brings with it a challenge to his ideals of life, death, and achievement.

The delivery of Dean’s misadventures and literary pursuits assumes an unusual form that invites readers into his perceptions and experiences from its opening lines:

We’re seated next to each other, you and me, in a warm, metaphorical train car aboard a sleek, metaphorical train when you stop reading your book, insert a bookmark, glance over, and ask me what I do for work. I’m not sure why you ask. Maybe the temperature invites discourse. I work at all hours, I tell you. Then I realize—in part thanks to the quizzical look on your face—that you aren’t in search of a vague, opaque answer from me. You want more. A real conversation to pass the time.

What Dean does is write. His output syncs with his inner concept of who he is—until everything changes. Derek McFadden chronicles Dean’s evolutionary process in six sections of revelations which are interconnected, but fluctuate in time, place, and considerations. These may challenge readers used to a linear timeline of events and sequential discoveries, but will thoroughly delight in drawing close connections between the visions of disabled Dean, literary achiever Dean, and other incarnations as he considers the courses of his life and impact of both chance and his choices:

A young Dean Harris was impressed but remained appropriately dubious. I didn’t think his Heaven was the real Heaven, but there was a chance Dad and I were unfair years ago in our judgment of the book and the man. If Heaven’s Gate was right, then when I got up there, my palsy would be gone, and people wouldn’t see me as a disabled drain on society (as my drunk stepfather did, and as I too often saw myself). I’d be the writer Dad and I had always known I could be, and folks would demand early access to my latest heavenly releases!

Readers contemplate a plethora of influences, from a father’s relationship with his son to the importance of Dean’s dog,Blackberry, to Dean’s relationship with girlfriend Claire, plus his living with a disability, regrets and self-permission, and more. The dovetailing of personalities, themes, life cycles and encounters, and the ultimate question of whether Dean’s future is truly accidental makes for a thought-provoking journey that considers the ultimate impacts of all kinds of events and choices.

Librarians seeking a literary novel that puts disability and achievement in a different light will welcome how The Accidental Future of Dean Harris builds its characters and revised images of success, failure, and what lies in between.

Its ability to draw with dreams, visions of the future, and revised connections makes for a winning story that is hard to put down."