A Gentleman in Charleston and the Manner of His Death - Softcover

Baldwin, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1596290870 ISBN 13: 9781596290877

Publisher: The History Press, 2006

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"Using language evocative of the period, the author carefully depicts a historical southern city where the past overshadows the present, and where personal codes of honor, designed to preserve decorum in polite society, ironically end up destroying it."—Booklist

"Strange, quirky, and always compelling, William Baldwin again proves himself to be a writer uniquely adept at bridging high art with the wild ride of a page-turning southern yarn. A Gentleman in Charleston and the Manner of His Death gives us Baldwin in top form, combining emotional drama with physical struggle for his impressively large and distinctly genuine cast of characters, all set against the sprawling historical backdrop of Charleston on the cusp of our modern age." —Bret Lott

"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

"Baldwin’s novel is historical fiction at its most compelling: a story as full of suspense as of high literary merit. The texture of late-nineteenth-century Charleston is made palpable."—Janette Turner Hospital, author of North of Nowhere, South of Loss, and Due Preparations for the Plague

About the Author:

With the publication of The Hard to Catch Mercy, the Los Angeles Times compared William Baldwin to both Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison, and the New York Times declared the work to be "a fine send up of the Great Southern Novel." Baldwin is a lifelong resident of the South Carolina Lowcountry. He has authored and co-authored numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, including Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden, The Fennel Family Papers, Heaven is a Beautiful Place, Inland Passages and Mantelpieces of the Old South.

About this edition

• Publisher: The History Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1596290870
• ISBN 13: 9781596290877
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 184