Secessia

Starred review from June 8, 2015
Wascom's second novel takes place in beguiling, fetid, and unruly New Orleans in the year 1862, as the city is overtaken by Union troops. Mayhem ensues, since the Big Easy is in no mood to comply with the blue-belly Gen. Butler, sent by the North to take control. The streets are rife with dissent as Butler tries to restore order, imprisoning city fathers and hanging agitators. Not long after the city falls, Angel Woolsack, an abusive, murderous rogue from Wascom's first novel, The Blood of Heaven, is found with his brains blown out. Other than his son, 12-year-old Joseph, no one cares much whether it was suicide, and the body is tidied up by household slaves before anyone is the wiser. Joseph and his mother, Elise, a descendant of slaves, must navigate a world turned inside out but still unsympathetic to the rights of women and people of African descent. Joseph becomes enamored with a Cuban refugee girl rescued from a shipwreck by Union soldiers, who lives with the madams next door, while Elise is caught in the snares of the sinister Dr. Sabatier, a mysterious figure from her past. Though most of the characters are as passionate, selfish, and greedy as the city itself, Wascom makes every one of them a pleasure to read, effortlessly inhabiting each of their specific psychologies. His fecund language is as overripe as the setting, but this is such a good yarn that readers will be totally on board with the whole rambunctious package. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman.

May 1, 2015
Edgar Allan Poe meets Bruce Catton: a mishmash of historical novel, thriller, and psychological study set in Civil War-era Louisiana. It stands to reason that if someone were to have bitten a person's ear off in the days before Mike Tyson, he or she might have earned a fitting sobriquet of savagery. So it is with Elise Durel, in New Orleans for her first dance and the victim of unwanted attentions, who now, 18 years later, is known as "Mademoiselle le Cannibale" or-shades of Anne Rice-" 'Ti Vampire." High-strung only begins to describe her, and things go from bad to worse when her 12-year-old son, his father Angel Woolsack of Wascom's debut, The Blood of Heaven (2013), goes missing. It being New Orleans, anything can happen, especially in a dislocated time when the Confederate regulars have just fled in droves, "overtaken by the Federal blue," and an occupying Union force led by a memorably corrupt, porcine general racked by "burning diarrheal evacuations" is now in charge. But is it really? Not in a city in which the stamp of the devil is common currency and all kinds of bestial things happen, the more distaff of them "bolstering the general's growing impression that the women of this city are more twisted than the men." Wascom's yarn is shaggier than 10 sheepdogs, and while there's much of merit in the book, it's relentlessly overwritten, as if the shade of Cormac McCarthy had been summoned to the Ouija board and ping-ponged a text from some other dimension where the dictionary is better exploited than in our own. Beneath the showy language and endless allusion (one character, in an evident nod to Poe, is named Ligeia) lies a potentially satisfying thriller packed with meaningful malice (as with, for instance, a banner embroidered with the motto "the she-adder's venom is as deadly as the he-adder's"). Getting to it, though, takes a lot of work. More discipline and fewer pyrotechnics would have served this story well. For the moment, in the Rhett Butler-ish words of Angel, "It doesn't make a damn."

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Starred review from June 15, 2015

Wascom's sequel to Blood of Heaven continues the story of the slave-dealing Angel Woolsack. While the first novel focused on the embryonic state of West Florida, this work is set squarely in New Orleans during the Union occupation of the Civil War. The stunning opening scene sets the pace for this fascinating saga. The drama revolves around the intrigues of Dr. Emile Sabatier, the plight of the mixed-race, passing-for-white Elise Woolsack, the second wife of patriarch Angel, and the coming-of-age struggles of Elise's son, Joseph. As the chaos of the occupation of the city commences, a parallel disorder erupts in the Woolsack household and Dr. Sabatier takes unfair advantage of the situation. The narrative achieves an exquisite counterbalance of five shifting points of view, including that of General Butler, the Union Commander of the occupation, and of Marina, an orphaned refugee from Cuba. VERDICT Wascom has hit his stride with this deftly descriptive historical treasure. The plot illuminates little-known areas of history and culture, examining issues of race and slavery through multiple perspectives in the context of social upheaval. Highly recommended for historical fiction readers. [See Prepub Alert, 1/12/15.]--Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos Lib., CA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2015

I loved loved Wascom's The Blood of Heaven, winner of the 2012 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for Fiction and a baroquely and brutally beautiful tale of the lawless early 1800s Gulf Coast area then called West Florida. Here, Wascom moves forward to New Orleans in May 1862, after the city has fallen to Union general Benjamin Butler. A 12-year-old named Joseph must reconcile himself to his father's history of extreme violence, even as his mother, of mixed race but passing for white, struggles to keep a grip on her son and her precarious place in society. She's especially threatened by an obsessive physician from her past. Eventually, they all come up against Butler, known as the Beast, as conspiracy and chaos threaten to sink the city. Not a light read but surely a gorgeous and absorbing one.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2015

Wascom's sequel to Blood of Heaven continues the story of the slave-dealing Angel Woolsack. While the first novel focused on the embryonic state of West Florida, this work is set squarely in New Orleans during the Union occupation of the Civil War. The stunning opening scene sets the pace for this fascinating saga. The drama revolves around the intrigues of Dr. Emile Sabatier, the plight of the mixed-race, passing-for-white Elise Woolsack, the second wife of patriarch Angel, and the coming-of-age struggles of Elise's son, Joseph. As the chaos of the occupation of the city commences, a parallel disorder erupts in the Woolsack household and Dr. Sabatier takes unfair advantage of the situation. The narrative achieves an exquisite counterbalance of five shifting points of view, including that of General Butler, the Union Commander of the occupation, and of Marina, an orphaned refugee from Cuba. VERDICT Wascom has hit his stride with this deftly descriptive historical treasure. The plot illuminates little-known areas of history and culture, examining issues of race and slavery through multiple perspectives in the context of social upheaval. Highly recommended for historical fiction readers. [See Prepub Alert, 1/12/15.]--Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos Lib., CA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.