The Page 69 Test: The Walls Are Closing in on Us

Disclaimer: The Page 69 Test is not mine. It has been around since 2007, asking authors to compare page 69 against the meat of the actual story it is a part of. I loved the whole idea of it and so I'm stealing it specifically to showcase small press titles - novels, novellas, short story collections, the works! So until the founder of The Page 69 Test calls a cease and desist, let's do this thing....

In this installment of Page 69, 

we put Trent Brown's The Wall Are Closing In On Us to the test.

Set up page 69 for us.

I realized when sending over this page that this could take forever, so here goes nothing. The MC, George, is out with his best friends Koi and Chito, along with Koi's girlfriend Susanna (affectionately called Satty here). George has already been through quite a lot leading up to this page -- no spoilers!! but... he's been through it -- and this is one of the few moments of respite he's been given so far. But despite the respite, temptation abounds for this boy. 

 

What is the book about?

Memory. New, old, and false identity. Circus performers. Mountain lions. A fight to the death. Choctaw mythology. Love and death. Disappearing during the most tumultuous time in modern history. The consequences of disappearing and coming back a new person. 

 At its core: The Walls is a fictional retelling of a mysterious ancestor of mine.

 

Do you think this page gives our readers an accurate sense of what the book is about? Does it align itself with the novel’s theme?

No? Yes? Maybe?

 I like to tell people that this book is about nothing at all. Or at least, what happens when you try to reduce yourself from who you are into nothing at all. But, to answer your second question, nothing aligns more with the novel's theme than the last sentence from this excerpt: "The only sounds were of squirrels and raccoons in the trees, frogs and toads in the muddy bank, and a restless fish gator that might come up for air between sleeps in the pitch black." If you like those things, you'll probably like this book. 

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Page 69

The Walls Are Closing In On Us 

Chito shrugged at her and looked to his older brother as if to ask him what he thought of the situation. Koi looked at the two boys, then his girlfriend who was still smiling at him with a gaze of temptation and then back at the front door of their home. No light escaped the windows. Their parents were asleep, or at least awake and not trying to see anything.

“What did you have in mind?” Koi asked her.

“Let’s walk down to the hatcha. And drink these,” she said, picking up two big glass bottles out of a crate in the bike basket and holding them up in front of her face.

“What’s that?” George asked.

“Beer,” she said.

George had never seen a bottle of beer before, or a beer at all. It was strictly forbidden in Chito and Koi’s household and he never saw his mammy drink a drop of it. She only spoke of it once, lamenting to herself about how so many good men in their community had been ruined by it. He had taken that as enough evidence to stay away from it ever since.

“Satty, what are you doing with that stuff?”

“Trying to have fun, like I said.”

“The boys can’t have alcohol.”

“Why not?”

Koi didn’t answer, because he didn’t really have one. And by the time he had thought of a few weak reasons why his two brothers couldn’t have a drink, he realized that she had laid the bike down and started carrying the bottles back down the driveway.

“Hey, where are you going?” he tried to yell in a whisper.

“To wherever the fun might be.”

He shook his head and turned to look at the two younger boys whose eyes were wide as if to say please can we go and he shook his head again and shrugged his shoulders and they started down the path after her.

 They sat under a small wood bridge at the edge of a creek offshoot of the Pearl, or hatcha, River. The water hardly moved here, it was more of a swamp than anything else. The only sounds were of squirrels and raccoons in the trees, frogs and toads in the muddy bank, and a restless fish gator that might come up for air between sleeps in the pitch black.

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Joshua Trent Brown is a writer from a small town in North Carolina that you've never heard of. He has a debut novel out called "The Walls Are Closing In On Us." You can buy it from Malarkey Books or pretty much anywhere else. He's working on another book too, if you like this first one. You can learn more about him at joshuatrentbrown.com.

The Walls Are Closing In On Us

Literary |  Historical fiction

Malarkey Books | March 3, 2026

The Walls Are Closing In On Us follows George, a dying Choctaw and white man, reckoning with the ghosts of his past as he bleeds out beside a cold North Carolina river, hundreds of miles from home. 

 Based ever so slightly on a true story, this Southern odyssey explores what it means to be anyone at all, and how even the simple act of reading someone’s name is enough to bring them back to life – no matter if they wish to remain forgotten.