Jubal Leatherbury

Book excerpt: On a hot July day in 1894, in a southern city still reeling from the death and destruction wrought by the Civil War, a four-year-old boy is found hanging in a woodshed, his eleven-year-old brother crouching behind a stack of firewood. Jubal Leatherbury is a little boy of unusual sweetness and beauty, his face a childs version of his handsome father Henrys face. Henry Leatherbury grew up fatherless in New Orleans during the period known as misrule, a bizarre combination of martial law and complete lawlessness, in the years following the Civil War. His own sensuality responded to the licentious atmosphere of the city, and he entered young adulthood as a reckless, undisciplined youth who denied himself little. Married unwisely, and singularly ill-equipped for fatherhood, Henry faces the challenges unique to parents of wounded children when he discovers that his young son has been the victim of ongoing and terrifying abuse. In the story of Jubal Leatherbury, love tests the measure of the power of cruelty in the forming of a man and in the shaping of human society. Set in the post-Civil War South, it takes a unique look at race relations post-slavery, as the races begin the process of viewing each other through different eyes. Characters that quickly become real and memorable experience joy and sorrow, love and hate, human tragedy and triumph, but when the book is closed, it is love that will be remembered.