New York, NY: Norton (2013)

First Edition. Signed.

As new in dust jacket.

A young doctor wrestles with the legacy of a slave resurrectionist owned by his South Carolina medical school.

Nemo Johnston was one of many Civil War-era "resurrectionists" responsible for procuring human corpses for doctors' anatomy training. More than a century later, Dr. Jacob Thacker, a young medical resident on probation for Xanax abuse and assigned to work public relations for his medical school's dean, finds himself facing a moral dilemma when a campus renovation unearths the bones of dissected African American slaves--a potential PR disaster for the school.

Will Jacob, still a stranger to his own history, continue to be complicit in the dean's cover-up or will he risk his entire career to force the school to face its dark past? First-time novelist Matthew Guinn deftly weaves historical and fictional truth, salted with contemporary social satire, and traditional Southern Gothic into a tale of shocking crimes and exquisite revenge--and a thoroughly absorbing and entertaining moral parable of the South.

A native of Atlanta, Matthew Guinn holds degrees in English from the University of Georgia, the University of Mississippi, and the University of South Carolina, where he was personal assistant to the late James Dickey. He lives in Jackson, Mississippi.