The Blood of Heaven

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

It is 1861, and Angel Woolsack is a Confederate about to breathe his last, as the Union forces make their inexorable approach. Rejected by his wife, his wealth no longer useful to him, he sets about recording his testament.

His story is that of a preacher's son, who flees the hardscrabble life of his itinerant father and falls in with a charismatic highwayman. The novel moves from the bordellos of Natchez to the Mississippi plantations, and finally to the back rooms of New Orleans where would-be revolutionaries are plotting to break away from the young United States.

The Blood of Heaven is a remarkable portrait of a young man seizing his place in a violent new world.

Reviews

An exceptionally eloquent and assured debut. * The Sunday Times *
Wascom is able to create an eerie bond between America's past and its present. * FT *
Every page of Kent Wascom's debut, The Blood of Heaven, struck me with its beauty and ugliness... This is not, like most novels, a glimpse of a life. It is a life. * Esquire *
A compelling saga of violence, ambition and love... an extraordinary voice telling an extraordinary story. * BBC History *
The Blood of Heaven entertains with its energetic language and fast-paced action, and the love story between Angel and his wife is moving in its you-and-me-against-the-world navet. Wascom's research is put to good use as the gargantuan forces of history squash Angel and his associates. * New York Times Book Review *
A bold, brilliant debut... It's the work of a young writer with tremendous ambition, a bildungsroman of religion and revolution... Wascom writes with a fire-breathing, impassioned eloquence. * The Washington Post *
Compelling. Wascom's writing rolls from the page in torrents, like the sermon of a revivalist preacher in the grip of inspiration. You can't help listening, no matter how wicked the message. * The Wall Street Journal *

Author Bio

Kent Wascom was born in New Orleans in 1986, and spent his childhood in Louisiana and 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 for The Blood of Heaven.