House of Coates

The life and photographs of Lester B. Morrison, legendary recluse. Can a man living in the shadows find redemption?

Washed up in the shadow of a refinery, Lester B. Morrison, legendary recluse, documents his life in a series of photographs taken with a disposable camera. In a landscape of off ramps, warehouses, and SRO hotels occupied by terminally lonely men, love and faith break in, quietly offering human connection and the possibility of redemption.

Publication date: October 21, 2014

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6.75 x 8.75

Page count: 140 pages

ISBN: 9781566893701

Brad Zellar has worked as a writer and editor for daily and weekly newspapers, as well as for both regional and national magazines. He is the author of Suburban World: The Norling Photos, The 1968 Project, Conductors of the Moving World, and House of Coates.

Alec Soth is a photographer whose first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published by Steidl in 2004. Since then Soth has published over a dozen books including Niagara (2006), Dog Days, Bogotá (2007), The Last Days of W (2008), and Broken Manual (2010). Soth’s work has been exhibited at Jeu de Paume in Paris and Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland.

“Transfixing. . . . A haunting change of pace.”

—The New York Times

“An enigmatic, innovative, and deadpan novel. . . . What [Zellar and Soth have] mined here falls somewhere in between W. G. Sebald’s photograph-strewn novels and Carson McCullers’s small-town freaks and loners: The result is an unaccountably strange and liberating narrative.”

—Vogue

“House of Coates can only be described as a personal truth of sorts, one wrapped in artistic mystery and pierced with startling photographs.”

—The Intentional

“A kind of case study of human drift.”

—The Star Tribune

“A standout. . . . Exquisitely written.” 

—Book Riot

“Gentle and unsparing in equal measure.” 

—Bustle

“A beautiful object, both for readers of fiction and for people who like Alec’s photography who are also interested in artists’ books.”

—OZY

“Loneliness . . . with a seedy flavor, a weatherworn feel, both angrier and more subdued, totally frank and intimate, but also silent and empty. What’s truly amazing about this book, having just described it in such terms, is that it strikes some very familiar chord without seeming cliché or archetypal or borrowed.” 

—Nomadic Press