Blood on the Roses

By Robert Hays
Published by Vanilla Heart Publishing
$4.99 Rating: Not yet rated.
Published: June 07, 2011
Words: 76,232 (approximate)
Language: English
ISBN: 9781937227128

Short description

Blood on the Roses is a frank and honest story that does justice to its splendid east Tennessee setting, stunning from beginning to end in its juxtaposition of raw ugliness and beauty and its historical veracity that captures both the engaging qualities of the Southern people and the terrible wrongs of discrimination and outrageous acts of pure racism carried out by a few.

Extended description

In his fourth and finest novel, Robert Hays writes with the journalist's careful attention to detail and an exquisite authenticity drawn from his own half-century love affair with the American South. Blood on the Roses is a frank and honest story that does justice to its splendid east Tennessee setting, stunning from beginning to end in its juxtaposition of raw ugliness and beauty and its historical veracity that captures both the engaging qualities of the Southern people and the terrible wrongs of discrimination and outrageous acts of pure racism carried out by a few.

In the autumn of 1955, at the height of America's concern over the murder of a black teenager by white racists in Mississippi and in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation, Rachel Feigen's Baltimore editor sends her South to report on a missing person case. Guy Saillot's last contact with his family was a postcard from the Tennessee Bend Motel, a seedy establishment situated on scenic.. (Read more) In his fourth and finest novel, Robert Hays writes with the journalist's careful attention to detail and an exquisite authenticity drawn from his own half-century love affair with the American South. Blood on the Roses is a frank and honest story that does justice to its splendid east Tennessee setting, stunning from beginning to end in its juxtaposition of raw ugliness and beauty and its historical veracity that captures both the engaging qualities of the Southern people and the terrible wrongs of discrimination and outrageous acts of pure racism carried out by a few.

In the autumn of 1955, at the height of America's concern over the murder of a black teenager by white racists in Mississippi and in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation, Rachel Feigen's Baltimore editor sends her South to report on a missing person case. Guy Saillot's last contact with his family was a postcard from the Tennessee Bend Motel, a seedy establishment situated on scenic Cherokee Lake. But she finds no record that he ever stayed there.

Feigen gets a tip that the motel caretaker, a deaf-mute named George, may know something about the missing man. George's consuming interest is the Tennessee Bend's arresting rose garden-its only truly positive quality-and she gains his favor by showing her appreciation for his beautiful roses.

Feigen quickly finds herself caught up in the bigotry she expected to observe as an outsider when three local extremists decide to teach a lesson to this "uppity jewgirl" from the North who's poking around in things that are none of her business. Their plan? Kidnap two black men and lock them and Feigen in Room 10 of the Tennessee Bend, complete with its two-way mirror voyeur's window, and let nature take its course. They're confident the men's "jungle instincts" will take over and she'll get her comeuppance, after which they'll give the "boys" a good whipping for messing with a white woman. But the two men taken at gunpoint, an Army sergeant just back from Korea and an Urban League attorney from Philadelphia, don't play the game the way their captors expect.

Appalling as it is, her own maltreatment is a mere sidebar to Feigen's mission: finding Guy Saillot. George's rose garden holds the key that unlocks the shocking secret and reveals the malevolent extremes to which unfettered intolerance can lead. The author leaves it to Charlie Monroe, the venerable FBI man from Knoxville whose Southern roots run deep, to sum up the pervading evil of this time and place: "It's easy to condemn. But prejudice is an unpastured dragon . . . Let it loose, nurture it with a little ignorance and fear, and pretty soon it's in all the dark places and if we're not careful we'll all be devoured in its ugly flame."
(Less)

Tags

racism, racism in america, vanilla heart publishing, robert hays, american history, hate crimes

Available ebook reading formats

Single purchase gains access to all formats. How to download ebooks to e-reading devices and apps.

Format	Full Book	Sample First 35%
Online Reading (HTML, good for sampling in web browser)	Buy	View sample
Kindle (.mobi for Kindle devices and Kindle apps)	Buy	Download sample
Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others)	Buy	Download sample
PDF (good for reading on PC, or for home printing)	Buy	No sample available
RTF (readable on most word processors)	Buy	No sample available
LRF (Use only for older model Sony Readers that don't support .epub)	Buy	Download sample
Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)	Buy	Download sample
Plain Text (download) (flexible, but lacks much formatting)	Buy	No sample available
Plain Text (view) (viewable as web page)	Buy	No sample available

Videos

Blood on the Roses, a Novel by Robert Hays
Blood on the Roses is a frank and honest story, stunning from beginning to end in its juxtaposition of raw ugliness and beauty and its historical veracity that captures both the engaging qualities of the Southern people and the terrible wrongs of discrimination and outrageous acts of pure racism carried out by a few.

Reviews

Log-in to write a Review   Log-in to add a Video Review

This book has not yet been reviewed.

Reason for report:
— Select a reason — Book is or contains spam Book infringes copyright Same content is published elsewhere with different author (for ex., by private-label rights) Duplicate Incomplete work (such as sample or serial) Should be marked adults-only Category is inappropriate Poorly formatted Nudity or other inappropriate content on cover Nudity or other inappropriate visual content in book Inappropriate erotica content Cover image is improper Content is inappropriate Other violation of Terms of Service Other reason not shown above.

Additional details: