Marshall Welch
Author
Fiction
Click on each cover to learn more about the story
Who's Who
Write and Wrong
A Box of Shadows
Grave Matters
Bio
Marshall Welch is a recovering academic who after 30+ years of scholarly writing in academia now writes fiction in the Portland, Oregon area where he lives with his wife. Prior to his career in higher education, he was a teacher, professional musician, breakfast chef, and gravedigger.
Reviews
Top review from the United States
5.0 out of 5 stars Reaching the last page of the story left me feeling a bit sad.
Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2020
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Author Marshall Welch is a clever writer, especially in selecting titles. His new novel, Back Story, is itself titled using a prime component in writing fiction. The back story of any good novel is the underlying foundation for the story, its history, its background.
Welch creates an intriguing story involving characters who come alive on the page. And soon become the reader's friends. Some about whom the reader is concerned. Others whom the reader cares for in a parental fashion. Some about whom the reader is a bit confused from time to time. All in all, they are like friends. Yet fictional friends.
In his novel, Welch takes the reader from the mid-1990s to mid-1970s and back again. The story travels on the waves of music played and sung by a college-hopping, bar-hopping, state-hopping band. Needless to say, this can prove nostalgic for some, witty for others, and downright good or bad memories for others.
But Welch's strongest writing trait is his ability to keep the reader guessing and turning pages. I couldn't wait to move on in the story with each character pulling me here, then there. Reaching the last page of the story left me feeling a bit sad. I wasn't ready to leave behind the characters of Back Story and close its covers. I wanted the story to go on. For me, that's the sign of a really good book.
I highly recommend Marshall Welch's Back Story to lovers of fiction, fans of the 1970s through 1990s, and Baby Boomers.
