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From lowcountry writer William Baldwin comes a new edition of his 1993 Lillian Smith Award-winning novel, The Hard to Catch Mercy. Including a new introduction by the author, this Southern Revivals edition makes available once more a story that touches on the issues of religion, race, and coming-of-age in the post-Civil War South, when the lines between these issues were not always clear. Set in fictional Cedar Point, a small southern community in the early 1900s, The Hard to Catch Mercy is told through the eyes of a young boy, Willie T., who is forced to confront the changing world around him. Including a cast of incredibly outlandish characters, Baldwin's novel is a wild, darkly comic tale rich with trick mules, Christian voodoo, fire, brimstone, first love, death, and the end of the world as Willie T. knows it.
“Baldwin again proves himself to be a writer uniquely adept at bridging high art with the wild ride of a page-turning southern yarn.” —Bret Lott, national bestselling author of Jewel Once deemed “the most powerful man in the South,” Charleston newspaper editor Frank Dawson met his violent death on March 12, 1889, at the hands of his neighbor, a disreputable doctor who was attempting to seduce the Dawson family governess. With a southern storyteller’s passion for intricate emotional and physical details, Baldwin, through the fictional guise of Capt. David Lawton, chronicles editor Dawson’s fated end. Having survived three years of bloody Civil War combat and the decade of violent Reconstruction that followed, the liberal-minded Lawton is now an embattled newspaperman whose national importance is on the wane. Still, he remains a celebrated member of Charleston’s elite, while in private life moving amid a pantheon of proud and beautiful women—Sarah, his brilliant wife; Abbie, his sensual sister-in-law; Mary, the all-knowing prostitute; and Hélène, the discontented Swiss governess—each contributing to an unfolding drama of history-haunted turmoil. War, earthquake, political guile, adultery, illegitimacy, lust, and murder—all the devices of gothic romance—play a role in this tale closely based on the lives of Charlestonians who lived these events over a century ago. “William Baldwin is that rare southern writer who writes for all people of all time. As I read his beautiful words in A Gentleman in Charleston and the Manner of His Death I walked the Holy City’s streets with my ancestors and, believe me, I never wanted the trip to end. This is an important book and a wonderful rich story.” —Dorothea Benton Frank, New York Times–bestselling author
Once deemed "the most powerful man in the south," Charleston newspaper editor Frank Dawson met his violent death on March 12, 1889, at the hands of his neighbor, a disreputable doctor who was attempting to seduce the Dawson family governess. More shocking than Dawson's demise was the quick acquittal of his killer on the grounds of self-defense. Drawn from events surrounding this infamous episode, the third novel from the Lillian Smith Award-winning William Baldwin pulls back the veil of a genteel society in a fabled southern city and exposes a dark visage of anger and secret pain that no amount of imposed manners could restrain - and only love might eventually heal. With a southern storyteller's passion for intricate emotional and physical details, Baldwin, through the fictional guise of Capt. David Lawton, chronicles editor Dawson's fated end. Having survived three years of bloody Civil War combat and the decade of violent Reconstruction that followed, the liberal-minded Lawton is now a famed but embattled newspaperman whose national importance is on the wane. Still, he remains a celebrated member of Charleston's refined elite, while in private life moving amid a pantheon of proud and beautiful women - Rebecca, his brilliant wife; Abbie, his sensual sister-in-law; Mary, the all-knowing prostitute; and Helene, the discontented Swiss governess - each contributing to an unfolding drama of history-haunted turmoil. Though Lawton loathes the South's cult of personal violence, by the customs of his era and place, he is duty-bound to protect his household, and though he loves his wife, he, like the doctor he despises, is attracted to the other women around him and entangled in his own sexual intrigues. Unable to act otherwise, Lawton meets his rival in a brutal physical contest, and in the aftermath, Rebecca, Abbie, Mary, and Helene must make peace with their own turbulent pasts. War, earthquake, political guile, adultery, illegitimacy, lust, and murder - all the devices of gothic romance - play a role in this tale closely based on the lives of Charlestonians who lived these events over a century ago. A Gentleman in Charleston and the Manner of His Death interrogates the social codes that govern behavior and relations among the men and women of different races and many classes and confronts us with the folly of the human condition. Will witnessing the killing of David Lawton instruct us as to how to escape our own fated ends? Slipped quietly beneath the storylines of Baldwin's quick-paced novel is perhaps an answer.
In his latest novel, Southern writer William Baldwin calls upon the true story of famed Charleston newspaper editor Frank Dawson to tell a tale fraught with romance and intrigue. Dawson--a larger-than-life personality revered throughout the nineteenth-century South--was murdered while defending his children's governess from the advances of an unscrupulous doctor who lived next door. Baldwin artfully intertwines details pulled from the personal accounts of those involved in the dramatic series of events with his own inimitable prose. The result is a captivating meld of fact and fiction, set in a tumultuous period in the history of the Holy City. that is now only a nostalgic memory.
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