Orchard Park and Other Works

Russell Huggins has died an indigent’s death but left behind a formidable literary estate. Tom Shaw has been enlisted by The University of Maryland’s Urban Archaeology Department to decipher and distill, catalogue and compile, Huggins’ vast collection of single-spaced, handwritten journals and ledgers littering the second floor of Button House, a dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of Orchard Park, a Baltimore suburb. Is it but a case of riotous hypergraphia or does the University’s adamancy suggest something else? *Orchard Park* tells the tale of one man’s effort to scratch at the canvas; to peel away life’s protective layers; to decrypt meaning from the cultural artifacts by which he is surrounded—to achieve grace through creation and redemption through imagination.