In 2010, The Permanent Press published Moyer's debut novel, The Chester Chronicles. Purchase it on Amazon here
In 2011, The Chester Chronicles won the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award.
“Kermit Moyer is one of America’s undiscovered treasures. I find myself periodically imagining a parallel world that’s exactly like this one, except that in the other world, Moyer occupies his proper place in the literary universe. I can only hope that with the publication of The Chester Chronicles that world is on its way.”
Praise for Kermit Moyer’s The Chester Chronicles
An eloquent, stylish novel-in-stories, 16 tales narrated by Chester Patterson, an "Army brat," who highlights his life from his sixth-grade crush in 1954 through the mid-1960s, when he's "officially an adult," and finally, his father's interment at Arlington National Cemetery. This evocative coming-of-age cycle brings to mind the stories of Lorrie Moore.
--Publishers Weekly
The Chester Chronicles is both heartbreaking and funny. Kermit Moyer has absolute perfect pitch when it comes to Chester’s voice and the times in which he lives.
--Alice McDermott
The brief chapters in this exquisitely written first novel also work as stand-alone stories, perfectly evoking the particulars of the late 1950s-early 1960s era and the universal emotions of childhood and adolescence. Chester "Chet" Patterson is the perennial new kid in town. Written from the perspective of an adult but employing a present-tense narration, the novel so honestly exposes pivotal moments during Chet's life that readers are almost made to feel like voyeurs. With a beautifully spare style, Moyer displays an unerring feel for those moments that distill both the pathos and the comedy of growing up.
--Booklist
Kermit Moyer is a master craftsman, each story in this volume is exactingly wrought and righteously rendered. His Chester is you and you and you, all of us dizzied by the dreams and disappointments unique to lived life. Me, I am just keen to see this moving collection reach as many folks as have eyes.
--Lee K. Abbott
This astonishing collection of linked stories--each so attentive, precise, evocative, and moving—is at once triumphant and elegiac, recalling the psychological depth of Richard Yates and the imagistic brilliance of James Agee.
--Richard McCann
Funny, passionate and absolutely riveting, The Chester Chronicles is the kind of book I wish were a place so that I could visit it often and find something new each time.
--Carolyn Parkhurst