Devil's Elbow

by Brainard Cheney, Stephen Whigham (Editor)

Marcellus Hightower, the young boy in the novel, THIS IS ADAM, returns to his hometown as a grown man in DEVIL'S ELBOW. He seeks answers, turning for help to Adam Atwell, his surrogate father. Adam, a black man in the segregated South, shares with Marcellus the haunting memory of David Ransom's murder on the mighty Ocmulgee River. The memories interweave with a quarter century of Marcellus Hightower's quest for love and redemption, through his developing character, economic calamity and the turmoil of war. With Adam's sage guidance, he finds a way to "cleanse his heart" and face life anew. "DEVIL'S ELBOW is a powerful novel indeed. The old verities—a man's troubles with women, with himself, with love and guilt—are all treated as freshly as if Cheney had discovered them." Walker Percy (1969)Author Brainard Cheney (1900-1990) grew up in the small south Georgia river town of Lumber City. He published four novels during his lifetime. A member of the Vanderbilt University literary set, he was close to Robert Penn Warren, Caroline Gordon, Allen Tate and many other of the Agrarian and Fugitive movements in the 1920-1930's. Later in life, he and his wife Frances Neel Cheney, became close friends with fellow Georgia author, Flannery O'Connor.

Genres: Historical

274 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 18, 2012