The Blood of Heaven; A Novel

Wascom, Kent

ISBN 10: 0802121187 / ISBN 13: 9780802121189

Published by Grove Press, New York, 2013

About this Item

457pp. 8vo. Burgundy paper and quarter cloth over boards, gilt on spine. Signed by author on title page, book has a complete number line (10.5.1), is unmarked, unclipped, unread, tight, and jacket is Brodart protected. Deckle fore-edges. Push to spine heel. Seller Inventory # 0002382

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Blood of Heaven; A Novel

Publisher: Grove Press, New York

Publication Date: 2013

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near fine

Dust Jacket Condition: fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: Stated First edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

One of the most powerful and impressive debuts Grove/Atlantic has ever published, The Blood of Heaven is an epic novel about the American frontier in the early days of the nineteenth century. Its twenty-six-year-old author, Kent Wascom, was awarded the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for fiction, and this first novel shows the kind of talent rarely seen in any novelist, no matter their age.

The Blood of Heaven is the story of Angel Woolsack, a preacher’s son, who flees the hardscrabble life of his itinerant father, falls in with a charismatic highwayman, then settles with his adopted brothers on the rough frontier of West Florida, where American settlers are carving their place out of lands held by the Spaniards and the French. The novel moves from the bordellos of Natchez, where Angel meets his love Red Kate to the Mississippi River plantations, where the brutal system of slave labor is creating fantastic wealth along with terrible suffering, and finally to the back rooms of New Orleans among schemers, dreamers, and would-be revolutionaries plotting to break away from the young United States and create a new country under the leadership of the renegade founding father Aaron Burr.

The Blood of Heaven is a remarkable portrait of a young man seizing his place in a violent new world, a moving love story, and a vivid tale of ambition and political machinations that brilliantly captures the energy and wildness of a young America where anything was possible. It is a startling debut.

About the Author:

Kent Wascom was born in New Orleans in 1986, and spent his childhood in Louisiana and Pensacola, Florida. He attended Louisiana State University and received his MFA from Florida State University. In 2012, he won the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for fiction, judged by Amy Hempel. Wascom lives in Tallahassee, Florida. The Blood of Heaven is his first novel.