The Committee

(Hardback)

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"The Committee is a triumph of historical fiction--and a warning from our past. Sterling Watson swiftly and elegantly anchors the reader in an era that many would love to forget, and then reminds us of the humanity within the history. Watson is the rare writer who can address the big ideas--politics and power, love and hate, fear and freedom--without ever losing sight of the characters at the story's heart." --Michael Koryta, New York Times best-selling author of How It Happened "Sterling Watson is a rare find among writers as he commands all the elements of great fiction, and he continues to prove this with The Committee. In his latest must-read, Watson uses his great skill to shepherd readers back to 1950s Florida and a terrifying time when unchecked power, driven by hatred and prejudice, destroyed lives." --Lori Roy, Edgar Award-winning author of Gone Too Long "Sterling Watson's The Committee shines a bright light on one of the darkest times in our collective history. This multilayered and complex look at how easy--and terrifying--it is for power and hatred to corrupt is a must-read for anyone who still subscribes to the notion that the 1950s were an idyllic time in American history." --Greg Herren, author of Survivor's Guilt and Other Stories "Timely and pertinent to today's cultural and political climate, this historical-fiction accounting of the persecution of gay people by the state in the 1950s reveals a part of Florida's past that sowed prejudice against our community for decades. This is a must-read." --Gale Massey, author of The Girl from Blind River The Committee is set in a sleepy late 1950s Florida university city. Its characters--professors, students, townspeople rich and poor, and politicians--are both typical of such a place and unusual, even bizarre, for the challenges they face and the changes they undergo when their lives are suddenly disrupted by the nefarious workings of a shadowy group of men, The Committee, who use the powers of government and the police to investigate and reveal the most private acts of innocent men and women. This is a story of love, both licit and hidden, war, friendship, betrayal, compromise, and finally the necessity to stand firm against the encroachments upon freedom by men who believe they do God's and the government's righteous work. Set against the backdrop of political turmoil and the clash of classes and cultures--Southern, academic, patrician, and demimonde--The Committee pits protagonist Tom Stall, scholarly, ambitious, and rising in his world of teaching and administration, against two men and a woman--a colleague, a university president, and an old friend turned deadly enemy--in a struggle for the soul of a town, a university, and an ideal. Tension and suspense build with crushing inevitability as hidden forces and unforeseen events threaten Stall's career and finally his very life.

Reviews

"The Johns Committee, a real, if lesser-known, McCarthy-esque group active in Florida, hovers over this tense, character-driven novel set in 1958 . . . Watson ably evokes a sense of the McCarthy era's regional impact in this thought-provoking story."
--Publishers Weekly

"[Watson] does an excellent job of portraying a time, place, and culture without assigning contemporary values where they didn't exist . . . The dialogue is realistic, and the pacing, especially toward the end, is quick and intense. Any reader wanting a history lesson wrapped in a compelling, believable novel will find much to contemplate here."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Whether he's stoking his narrative or letting his mind wander, Watson writes crisp, beautiful prose."
--Booklist

"The Committee takes place on campus, but deserves to be included with those 'academic' novels like Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe, Randall Jarrell's Pictures from an Institution, Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, and Jane Smiley's Moo, all books that burst out of their scholarly settings to light up the characters and societies they live in. And life in Gainesville in the 1950s doesn't bear looking at too closely: Without being preachy or didactic, Watson's book exposes the race, class, and gender wars running below the picturesque pathways like tainted water; there's been some progress since then, but the reader is led to wonder how meaningful it's been . . . This book will hold you to the very end, and after."
--Creative Loafing Tampa, a Poet's Notebook post from Peter Meinke, Poet Laureate of Florida

"Historians, of necessity, are skeptical of historical fiction. But there is the atypical work, such as Patrick Smith's A Land Remembered, that historians praise for its historical verisimilitude. Sterling Watson's The Committee has a narrower scope than Smith's Florida epic, but Watson accurately conveys the emotional turmoil induced in Floridians by the Johns Committee in the 1950s."
--Florida Times-Union

"My best fiction read this summer was local legend Sterling Watson's newest novel, The Committee. Could not put it down."
--Paradise News, recommended by Nanette Wiser

"The Committee is at once an historical, political, and academic novel, and it is one that succeeds on all these fronts . . . Those who yearn for a return to the solid, established 50s may not know just what it is they are wishing for. The Committee should serve as a wholesome reminder."
--Reviewing the Evidence

"Sterling Watson's new novel, The Committee, transmutes Lavender Scare investigators' ruthless assaults on suspected homosexuals in 1950s Gainesville into heart-racing fiction that's every bit as spellbinding as Watson's noir masterpiece Suitcase City . . . Even in the midst of its historical and political pre-occupations, as well as its expertly paced progression into danger and violence, The Committee has its moments as a finely nuanced academic novel. With its richly drawn cast of identifiable English department types, from the brilliant and ambitious to the middling and jaded, their covert alliances and prickly departmental meeting dynamic, The Committee at times feels like a darker counterpart to Richard Russo's Straight Man."
--New York Journal of Books

"A well-written story with many layers, that Watson skillfully peels away in each and every chapter."
--Bookstr, Three to Read pick for the week of February 3

"This academic mystery takes us into the depths of the Cold War, Florida edition, as a bunch of professors find themselves targeted by the mysterious Committee, dedicated to using law to control morality. As The Committee begins, a professor commits suicide, and a curious onlooker gets more than he bargained for when he opens his own investigation."
--CrimeReads, included in CrimeReads' Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020

"An engrossing, if not at times dark tale in which at the end of each chapter you simply cannot afford to put it down long enough to let your mind run riot on what you believe to be happening!"
--Exclusive Magazine

"A work of historical fiction set in the turbulent era of McCarthyism (1950s America, specifically in Gainesville, Florida)."
--St. Petersburg Catalyst

"Sterling Watson imbues the lives of these closeted gay men fearing exposure to the masses with gravitas and humanity. Historically relevant and as timely-as-ever, Sterling Watson's narrative both entertains and informs in equal measure."
--Bolo Books

"When you immerse yourself in a Sterling Watson novel, you've put yourself in the hands of a master. Watson's 8th novel, The Committee, brilliantly and disturbingly sheds light on The Johns Committee, a McCarthy-esque organization that ruthlessly hunted down suspected Marxists and homosexuals in the 1950s."
--Tombolo Books, #1 Bestseller for January 2020

"The Committee is a triumph of historical fiction--and a warning from our past. Sterling Watson swiftly and elegantly anchors the reader in an era that many would love to forget, and then reminds us of the humanity within the history. Watson is the rare writer who can address the big ideas--politics and power, love and hate, fear and freedom--without ever losing sight of the characters at the story's heart."
--Michael Koryta, New York Times best-selling author of How It Happened

"Sterling Watson is a rare find among writers as he commands all the elements of great fiction, and he continues to prove this with The Committee. In his latest must-read, Watson uses his great skill to shepherd readers back to 1950s Florida and a terrifying time when unchecked power, driven by hatred and prejudice, destroyed lives."
--Lori Roy, Edgar Award-winning author of Gone Too Long

"Sterling Watson's The Committee shines a bright light on one of the darkest times in our collective history. This multilayered and complex look at how easy--and terrifying--it is for power and hatred to corrupt is a must-read for anyone who still subscribes to the notion that the 1950s were an idyllic time in American history."
--Greg Herren, author of Survivor's Guilt and Other Stories

"Timely and pertinent to today's cultural and political climate, this fictional account of the persecution of gay people by the state in the 1950s reveals a part of Florida's past that sowed prejudice against our community for decades. This is a must-read."
--Gale Massey, author of The Girl from Blind River

"The Committee is a timely reminder that the hard work of resistance and social justice often falls to reluctant ordinary citizens--the question is, will they rise to the moment or go-along-to-get-along Sterling Watson's historical novel takes us to a Florida in the grip of a McCarthyesque governor determined to rid the state of homosexuals and communists. I found myself riding anxiously alongside Tom Stall as he doggedly navigated the hazards of his own imperfections, and the fraught politics of his Florida campus, trying to protect his career and family without sacrificing his integrity. Again and again, I shook my head in frustration at the craven politics portrayed in this book while taking inspiration to fight the injustices we face today."
--Alsace Walentine, Tombolo Books

Author Bio

Sterling Watson is the author of eight novels, including Deadly Sweet, Sweet Dream Baby, Fighting in the Shade, and Suitcase City. Watson's short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Prairie Schooner, the Georgia Review, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Michigan Quarterly Review, and the Southern Review. He was director of the creative writing program at Eckerd College for twenty years and now teaches in the Solstice MFA Program at Pine Manor College in Boston. Of his sixth novel, Suitcase City, Tom Franklin said, If this taut literary crime novel doesn't center Sterling Watson on the map, we should change maps. Watson lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.