39: Your Last Birthday (A Red Dirt Road Novel)
CrimeAdded on January 13, 2026
Description
2023 Maxy Awards WinnerStephen Detals played professional baseball before flaming out in whiskey-fueled catastrophe.His father and grandfather killed themselves on their 39th birthdays. Stephen is 38. He battles alcoholism, abandonment, suicidal tendencies, and lethal family history to survive his impending birthday.This novel chronicles the final eight days before Stephen Detals' 39th birthday. His relapse into addiction forces Stephen back to the Neches River and the Piney Woods of Southeast Texas. Detals returns home to face purported murderess and family matriarch, Rose Petal Detals, and unravel the secrets of the family and hometown he abandoned twenty years earlier.Sojka's previous novels received glowing reviews and won awards. Still, those novels only paid the toll to guide him to this moment. The author nurtured his ability, to lay his soul bare, exposing his darkest secrets, raveled into the mysteries of 39.
Reader Reviews
Hoooooo doggie!! That was an amazing story!! 4.5 stars, which I was going to round down simply because there's a lot of baseball in these pages (which I know next to nothing about and is hardly the author's fault), but then I ran into this quote: "I felt like a pinata at a broomstick convention, wondering when hard candy would shoot out my a@#." That's just pure writing gold and is worthy of more than 5 stars alone!!Back to the book. This author could write the birds out of the trees (Is that ev
I received an ARC of this book and am thrilled to be able to leave an early review. I was really sucked into this book by the summary (a fairly straight forward summary tbh), but I will admit it was not what I was expecting. This book is deeply embedded with family lore, struggles of addiction and flawed characters. It’s told in pieces by a somewhat distracted narrator who believes he was cursed. The story itself is very unique, the characters and the characters are thought out. The pacing of th
This is a voluntary review of a free book I received from Book Sirens.Not the typical type of novel I usually read. Bit slower to get through as well.On that note, I found it really well written and enjoyed getting to know each of the characters.Tails documents the last few days of his life, bringing his past to light and putting together the pieces of haunted memories.We meet his family and friends They all share similar losses and affected in different ways. Will he make it to 39?
