Description:
A must-read novel about family ties, generational racism, and a mysterious murder that casts is shadow across a man fulfilling his mother's dying wish.
Brief description: Anthony Todd Carlisle, Ph.D., is married to Amy Alexander, Ph.D., and has two children, Arielle and Amya. He is an associate professor in the Department of Culture, Media, and Performance at California University of Pennsylvania. Carlisle was a reporter for 11 years. He worked for the New Pittsburgh Courier, Daily News, Pittsburgh Business Times, Beaver County Times and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. During those years, he worked in several beat areas: city government, urban affairs, religion, education, transportation, labor and sports as a business. As a reporter, he won several awards, including Robert L. Vann Award for feature writing and investigative reporting and the Keystone State Spotlight Award for first place business story. Carlisle is also a veteran, having served in the United States Army Reserve for 14 years, reaching the rank of captain. He worked as both a supply officer and a military journalist. In 2003, he was deployed to the Middle East as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Upon his return, he was awarded California University of Pennsylvania's Presidential Medal for Patriotic Service.
Review Quotes:
An affirmation of the human spirit.Can a Black American find grace in a land built upon the toil, tears, and blood of his family and ancestors?
- Margo Wilson, author, The Main Ingredient
In this compact first novel by Anthony Todd Carlisle, readers ride along with New York reporter James Kingsman as he makes the literal and spiritual trip to his homeland in Clayhatchee, Alabama to bury his mother. The characters we meet along the way are carefully crafted and richly complex. Readers often feel as if they are in the kitchen eating cornbread with Aunt Dee or sweating it out on the streets of Clayhatchee with cousin Bunky as they comb the streets looking for clues to mysteries that fold and unfold on themselves. Readers will not be able to put this one done until the puzzles are solved and Kingsman finds his way home and back again. Carlisle's words sing on the page in this fascinating genre-bending novel.
- Christina Fisanick, author, The Optimistic Food Addict
Through twists and turns down the dark roads of the Jim Crow era and today's south, The Souls of Clayhatchee shines a light on the magnetism of family and the shattering effects of racist violence. Brisk, touching, and entertaining ... sweeping me into a world I could never enter myself, and I will never forget.
- Paul Hertneky, author, Rust Belt Boy