Dixie Autumn
Dixie Autumn is a "must read" for every Southerner. Jerry Shinn has married his rich experience--small town South Carolina youngster, Chapel Hill undergrad in the 1950s, reporter and editor and a keen observer of the racial tensions of the 1960s--with his vivid imagination to devise a plot that will keep you turning pages until the end. His carefully drawn characters--the good, the bad, and the dead--will stay in your head and heart for weeks.--Jon Buchan, author of Code of the ForestWalker Percy said he was a typical southern boy: he liked fast cars, pretty girls, barbecue, and bourbon. Hill Cooper possesses many of these same qualities, plus a sense of decency and conscience. While Dixie Autumn is a first rate mystery, it also explores Hill's friendship-romance with Charlotte Ravenel, through flashbacks which glimmer with poetic vignettes. The last image of the story is unique and hard to forget. In fact, you don't want to forget it. Jerry Shinn shines.--Ben Greer, author of Time Loves a Hero, The Loss of Heaven and Murder in the Holy CityJerry Shinn rivets us at the intersection of good and evil, black and white, soul-searching and rationalization. Through a brash young reporter who returns home to investigate the death of his friend, we re-live those dark days of the 1960s when the South's raw seams were on display. With aching detail, he recreates the interplay of place and time, proving himself again a noble thinker and now a master storyteller.--Dannye Romine Powell, author of Parting the Curtains: Interviews with Southern Writers