Southern Man by Greg Iles
What’s It About?
The vastly anticipated new Penn Cage novel is a few man — and a city — rocked by anarchy and tragedy, however unbowed within the struggle to save lots of these they love.
Dubbed one in every of America’s biggest storytellers, New York Occasions bestselling writer Greg Iles returns to his beloved Penn Cage character with a thought-provoking and necessary thriller, Southern Man.
The story takes place 15 years after the discharge of the third guide in Iles’ Natchez Burning trilogy, a collection that dropped at the floor lots of the points society confronted then and nonetheless faces immediately — now with maybe much more urgency.
“I had written so deeply about race within the trilogy, but these books had been set previous to the election of Barack Obama,” Iles says, in an interview with BookTrib. “That had prevented me from dealing straight with sure aspects of race in America, after which as soon as we reached the madness of 2016, I spotted I used to be virtually compelled to return to the topic. I might conceive of no extra pure method to try this than to step again into the universe of the Cage household in Mississippi.”
It will imply leaping forward in time to a minimum of 2016, however Iles went all the best way to 2024, a sort of time shift virtually extraordinary in mystery-type collection.
“What most collection writers do is to go away their protagonist in a type of immortal 40s, as if the world isn’t altering round them, or not by a lot,” Iles says. “Or possibly they age them from their 30s via their early 50s, however then time type of ceases to exist. In contrast, I aged Penn, fairly actually, 18 years on the web page in a single go and killed a minimum of one main character off-screen.”
As Iles factors out, Penn’s world has all the time been a mix of factual and fictional America, and though Southern Man isn’t fairly ripped from the headlines, Iles says he’s by no means written a novel with so many precise real-world characters. A harmful line to stroll, he admits.
“It’s very simple to come back off trying like a idiot in case you’re improper. Sadly, I’ll show to be extra proper than I feared about what would possibly occur between now and November,” Iles says. “Naturally, protecting such an enormous hole from a serious character’s life and inserting him in a wholly new and alien current was a troublesome problem from the perspective of craft, however a minimum of these sorts of issues are solvable by laborious work. It’s the deeper themes of a novel like this which can be the true problem.”
It wasn’t the one problem Iles confronted. The writer has just lately been upfront about his ongoing battle with a uncommon type of most cancers — a number of myeloma. Although thought-about an “outdated individual’s most cancers”, Iles was recognized on the age of 36, and for a very long time saved his sickness a secret. His mother was recognized with the identical most cancers in her late seventies. In Southern Man we study that Penn Cage has additionally obtained this dire prognosis.
“I needed to watch [my mother] die of the illness whereas I used to be scripting this novel and affected by it myself,” he says. “I don’t suppose there may be any method I might have gone via the 4 years it took to supply this novel with out together with that depressingly distinctive expertise.”
Regardless of the well being challenges Iles continues to face, Southern Man is a weighty guide, coming in at virtually 1,000 pages. The subject material is heavy — however Iles deftly navigates the pacing, making certain readers are immersed to the top. That’s necessary.
“I’m trying one thing very troublesome and dangerous within the current historic second, which is to write down meaningfully about race as a white writer,” he says. “In all frankness, I’m writing primarily for a white viewers. I’ve nothing to show a Black readership about Jim Crow or slavery that they don’t already know way more intimately than I.”
Iles hopes the danger pays off, most importantly to make sure that the errors of the previous aren’t made once more.
“It appears to me that fairly a number of human beings, and certainly humanity itself, appear bent on repeating the errors of the previous, despite remembering them fairly clearly,” he says. “If we do on a societal scale what people so usually do on the small scale, we danger shedding democracy itself, which might fairly actually speed up the nation and the world towards bodily destruction. These are the stakes of the 2024 election.
“What I need individuals to remove from this guide, is what we’ve seen made clear since 2016, however individuals appear unable to understand: that racism, for which the Deep South has all the time been excoriated, isn’t essentially a geographically primarily based or confined factor. The white animus towards Black individuals, notably Black individuals as a gaggle or race, exist throughout this nation, and at a really deep tribal degree. That reality is the first explanation for a lot of the troubles America is enduring immediately.”
Iles acknowledges that by taking a robust political stance — personally, but additionally together with his fiction — he probabilities alienating readers. Nevertheless it’s a danger price taking.
“The comparatively gentle criticisms of Donald Trump in my final novel, Cemetery Highway, triggered some shockingly vitriolic reader mail, in addition to efforts by these readers to bomb Amazon with one-star evaluations. So clearly, a essentially political novel like Southern Man would virtually definitely set off one thing infinitely worse,” he says. “Anybody who reads my work would probably know I’m the final writer to let one thing like that have an effect on my imaginative and prescient of a guide, and I’m definitely not going to soft-pedal something within the hope of not shedding gross sales.”
As if proving his level, Southern Man has already obtained vital acclaim.
Iles will now return to specializing in his well being. The most cancers — which had lain dormant for 20 years — switched on once more and Iles postponed a vital stem cell transplant to verify he completed this guide. He hopes to finish the process throughout the subsequent three months.
Within the meantime, Iles is choosing away at what he calls his “Elvis E-book,” a thriller set on 1965 throughout a non secular disaster in Elvis Presley’s life. The 2 most important fictional characters are Penn Cage’s father, Tom, and his pal, the Texas ranger, Walt Garrity, who’re each of their 30s on the time.
“The novel begins on a fictional film set on the Mississippi coast. It was a dude ranch constructed by some cronies of Al Capone, and I as soon as stayed there as a boy,” Iles says. “Like a few of my different novels, this guide additionally comprises some thrilling real-world characters. One is Richard Boone, the star and occasional director of Have Gun Will Journey, whereas others, amongst a number of, are Robert Redford and Nathalie Wooden. Fortunately, this guide is lower than a 3rd so long as most of my books, and I believe my readers will likely be ecstatic if this proves to be my subsequent launch.”
No matter size, Iles followers are all the time ecstatic with a brand new launch.
Concerning the Creator:
Greg Iles has spent most of his life in Natchez, Mississippi. His first novel, Spandau Phoenix, was the primary of many New York Occasions bestsellers. His Natchez Burning trilogy continued the story of Penn Cage, the protagonist of The Quiet Sport, Turning Angel, and #1 New York Occasions bestseller The Satan’s Punchbowl. Iles’s novels have been made into movies and revealed in additional than thirty-five nations. He’s a member of the lit-rock group The Rock Backside Remainders, lives in Natchez together with his spouse, and his three kids.
Publish Date: 5/28/2024
Style: Fiction, Thrillers
Creator: Greg Iles
Web page Rely: 976 pages
Writer: William Morrow
ISBN: 9780062824691