Brambleman
May 24, 2012
Brambleman
Author: Jonathan Grant
Publisher: Thornbriar Press
Publication Date: March 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9834921-2-2
Product Description
Down-and-out Atlanta writer Charlie Sherman has no idea what madness awaits him when a mysterious stranger convinces him to finish a dead man’s book about a horrific crime that's gone unpunished for decades.What Charlie inherits is an unwieldy manuscript about the mob-driven expulsion of more than 1,000 blacks from Forsyth County, Georgia in 1912. During the course of his work, Charlie uncovers a terrible secret involving a Forsyth County land grab. Due to its proximity to Atlanta, the stolen farm is now worth $20 million—and a sale is pending.
When he finds the land’s rightful owner, Charlie becomes convinced he's been chosen by a Higher Power to wreak justice and vengeance on those who profit from evil.
And then things go horribly wrong.
Idgie Says:
This is a big hearty book that you can't expect to breeze through. There's a lot of background information, not only historical but also character driven and you need to expect to spend some real time reading this.
The product description above tells the basic gist of the story, but there's also a strong supernatural element to it. Charlie comes across the manuscript after a mysterious man distracts him from contemplating suicide and provides him a home and a job with the wife of the original owner of the story. Charlie is to clean the manuscript up and get it published.
He has no real idea who this mystery man is, and also notices later that the contract he signed appears to be changing on it's own. Suddenly there are severe ramifications should he not manage to find a publisher for the book. Did he inadvertently sign a deal with the devil?
The story backflashes to 1912 when the whites drove the hardworking black landowners out of the Forsyth County and took it as their own. Now years later, that land is worth a huge amount of money. The question being - 100 years later, who really owns the land?
This book has great amounts of historical information in it, which will appeal to many, and that little element of supernatural, which turns it into a nice fictional book with surprises throughout. A little bit of something for everyone!
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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: Forsyth County, famous as the birthplace of Hee-Haw’s Junior Samples, has for most of the past century, existed as an intentionally all-white community bordering the black Mecca of Atlanta since 1912, following one of the 20th century’s most violent racist outrages—including lynching, nightriding, and arson.
In 1987, the sleepy community gained notoriety when a small march led by civil rights firebrand Hosea Williams was broken up by rock- and bottle-throwing Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and their sympathizers. Bloody but unbowed, Williams returned the next week with 25,000 followers in one of largest civil rights marches in history. There was talk of reparations. Oprah came. Protests and counter-protests yielded a landmark Supreme Court case on free speech. But most importantly, white people flocked to Forsyth. It became the fastest- growing county in the nation, the richest one in Georgia, and one of the twenty wealthiest in the U.S.
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Reviewed by Idgie. If you would like to have the Dew review a book, please contact me at dewonthekudzu@gmail.com
