Publisher's Synopsis
A lost literary classic, back-in-print for the first time in 60 YEARS, a powerful novel in the tradition of IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
It's 1959. Matthew Scott is a widowed, alcoholic reporter from New York who seeks personal and professional redemption when he's sent to the Deep South to write about a town that is defying a U.S. Supreme Court decision to integrate blacks into schools. His mere presence is a catalyst that ignites long-buried racial, political, religious, and personal conflicts among the residents, both white and black, ripping the town apart. Those tensions violently explode when Scott is falsely arrested by the bigoted, tyrannical sheriff for the rape and murder of an out-spoken black schoolteacher.
This is a stunning, shockingly vivid portrait of a dark time in America's history, a tale of intolerance, bigotry and hope that's as relevant today as it was sixty years ago...
Praise for FACE OF MY ASSASSIN:
"Jan Huckins and Carolyn Weston have a true ear for Southern speech, a sharp eye for Southern style, and an acute feeling for the South...they have treated eloquently a significant segment of the current Southern tragedy in perhaps the only way the sad tale can be told -- as fiction with a heavy beat of melodrama." Arkansas Gazette
"A vivid portrait of a community...the book's detail is surprisingly sharp. The authors have told a moving story filled with passion and pathos, and a little joy. The final effect is a telling denunciation of racial prejudice." Arizona Daily Star
"At sixty-one years distance it's hard not to read this novel for the remarkable social document it is, for what it says about segregation in the 1950s. The issues 'Face of My Assassin' raises are sometimes brutal and obvious but there's a lot of subtly here, too. As integration is coming to the fore, this novel explores prejudice in all its forms -- institutional, paternalistic, unconscious -- but also the possibility of change and the way people see their own racism. It's a powerful piece of writing." NB Magazine UK
"An exciting melodrama dealing with integration in the South...a thorough examination of southern racial attitudes. The book has the power to move and enlighten readers." Los Angeles Times
"Written in a smooth, expert style, [with] a plot that outdoes Faulkner in imagination." Dan Wakefield, The Saturday Review
"An exciting novel and one valuable because of its sociological meaning." Lincoln Journal-Star
"This intense novel will hold your interest and send you racing from page to page as you observe an almost imperceptible change in a bigoted small town. The characters vibrate with life and make this novel one of the most vital of the year." Napa Valley Star
"A romantic-realistic novel about the present-day South. This is an especially thought-provoking novel, sympathetic to black and white, and written with admirable objectivity." Pittsburgh Courier
"They write with indignation and authority, with urgency and verve.. [the book] has something significant to say and tells its story with pace and narrative skill." Rocky Mountain Telegraph
"While the novel is good melodrama, one may hope that it is also true prophecy. Face of My Assassin makes good reading and has the additional value of suggesting that the problem of segregation-integration issue is not so much that the Southern people have unenlightened opinions as that many of them are too lethargic to stand up and be counted as enlightened ones." MANAS Journal, Explorations in Ethical Thought
