New York, NY: Knopf (2001)

First Edition. Signed.

Fine in dust jacket.


A heart-stopping story, written with grace and lucidity, located at the dead center of Southern mythology and our most intransigent national trauma. The year is 1902, and the place is a small community deep in the Mississippi Delta, where black and white alike struggle to coexist as the era of Reconstruction gives way to Jim Crow. Into this tense atmosphere rides Tandy Payne -- brother to Loring's well-liked mayor, and a dissolute gambler looking to reclaim the family estate and escape his many enemies. The presence of a black postmistress in town soon awakens his darkest instincts, and the ensuing clash with his principled brother results in a harrowing confrontation. Fueled by a haunting and bloody history, their familial dispute quickly spreads through the countryside, testing those who long for an antebellum past, and all those who must face down deep hatreds in order to claim their future.