Southern Tragedy, In Crimson — Lawrence Naumoff

For A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow, Naumoff creates an extended metaphor like a poet. The novel has the grace and finality and wonder of a postmortem, where each detail is revealed, turned around and looked at from behind, from underneath. It's about some people mostly screwing up right and left, and the remnants of a beautiful, bright heritage, and the diary of a woman driven mad by grief. By the end of the novel, there is nothing less than the whole shebang, the whole mystery of life and death and honor.

With meticulous physical descriptions, Naumoff has written not just an historical novel, or a political one, or one of personal lives and tragedies, but all those things at once.

--Haven Kimmel, author of A Girl Named Zippy