Tidewater Blood - Softcover

Hoffman, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060007583 ISBN 13: 9780060007584

Publisher: HarpPeren, 2002

Synopsis

The secret was buried deep within the high mountains of West Virginia. It spiraled down to a devastating legacy of betrayal, revenge, and rage that was destined to destroy a dynasty.

Charley LeBlanc is the black sheep, a disgrace to the family name -- a name steeped in tradition, wealth, privilege, and prestige. But when Charley is hauled out of his shanty hideaway in a Chesapeake inlet by the sheriff, he's up against more than he had ever faced in Vietnam, prison, or the rest of his miserable past.

Presumed guilty of setting a charge that blew his family to kingdom come, Charley becomes a fugitive, running deep into the mountains -- and into the past. Unless he can find out who did it and why, he's going to pay with his life, and that suddenly seems too precious to lose.

About this title

About the Author:

William Hoffman is the author of twelve novels as well as four short-story collections. His writing has won numerous awards, including the Andrew Lytle Prize, the Goodheart Prize, the John Dos Passos Prize, and the Hillsdale Foundation Fiction Prize from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His short stories have been featured in Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories 1996. The 0. Henry Awards. Tidewater Blood won the 1999 Hammett Award.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Murder, injustice, flight, detection, a disappointingly, though expertly, formulaic tale from Hoffman (Follow Me Home, 1994, etc.). Only two misfortunes mar the festivities when the LeBlanc family, the doyens of Tidewater, gather at Bellerive, the family manse, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jean Maupin LeBlanc's arrival in Virginia. One is the absence of black-sheep brother Charley LeBlanc, still persona non grata at Bellerive even though he's been released early from Leavenworth on account of good behavior. The other is an explosion that kills John LeBlanc, the head of the family, and his wife and son. (Middle brother Edward's family, a few minutes late in arriving, live to celebrate other anniversaries.) The police naturally assume that Charley, whose feud with his family goes back to a time before his father's death, is responsibleit's exactly the sort of poke in the family eye that would have struck him as appropriateand so they send a deputation to his subsistence camp in Lizard Inlet to haul him in. The King County sheriff and the Commonwealth's Attorney assume he's guilty; ditto his court-appointed lawyer. But they can't find any physical evidence that would tie Charley, long banished from Bellerive, to the scene, and while they're looking they agree to widen Charley's confinement to the county limits. It's Charley's cue to tug at his leash and hell around, of course, and in a series of memorable vignettes he sweet-talks rides from strangers, swaps lies with country fisherman, brawls with jealous barflies, and casually begins to pick up information about the fatal blastinformation that implicates him in quite a different role than killer, and points to a dead man as the real bomber. Limpid and swift-moving, with a full complement of understated surprises: an exemplary presentation of the innocent man on the run for readers who want more texture than they can find in The Fugitive. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarpPeren
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0060007583
• ISBN 13: 9780060007584
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304