November 18, 2019
The Johns Committee, a real, if lesser-known, McCarthy-esque group active in Florida, hovers over this tense, character-driven novel set in 1958 from Watson (Suitcase City). Tom Stall, an English professor at the University of Florida, is on campus when a fellow professor, Jack Leaf, appears to jump to his death from a classroom window. A student says he saw two official-looking men in suits leave the classroom building shortly before Leaf’s fatal fall. Stall soon learns that Leaf hid the fact he was Native American, because the university authorities would never have hired him had they known. The stakes rise when photos of Leaf engaged in homosexual behavior surface. Meanwhile, Stall’s wife, Maureen, is avoiding sex with him, and she’s also chafing under the social restrictions imposed on women. As the political situations both within the English department and in the state intertwine, the threats to Stall’s career escalate and become life-threatening. Watson ably evokes a sense of the McCarthy era’s regional impact in this thought-provoking story. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary.
November 1, 2019
In 1958, a professor at the University of Florida learns that bigotry, hatred, and corruption have consequences far beyond the confines of the classroom. Professor Tom Stall seems to be an average English professor, perhaps a little priggish--when talking to a traumatized student, he mentally corrects her use of "can" with "may." When well-liked professor Jack Leaf supposedly commits suicide, Stall learns that he was suspected of being gay. A secret committee of men (based on the real-life Florida Legislative Investigation Committee under the control of Gov. Charley Johns) is operating on campus. "The Committee has police powers, subpoena powers, a team of lawyers and investigators, and they're all hell-bent to root out Communists, homosexuals and other undesirables in our schools," the university president tells Stall. But as events proceed, with betrayals, secrecy, and violence, Stall realizes he has no idea whom to trust. The author (Suitcase City, 2015) lets Stall ruminate a little too often, but he does an excellent job of portraying a time, place, and culture without assigning contemporary values where they didn't exist. When Stall's wife realizes her pregnancy means she'll have to quit teaching, for example, she doesn't like it but doesn't fight it, either. The dialogue is realistic, and the pacing, especially toward the end, is quick and intense. Any reader wanting a history lesson wrapped in a compelling, believable novel will find much to contemplate here.
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December 1, 2019
Tom Stall loves his job as an English professor at a university in Gainesville, Florida. He loves his colleagues, "eccentrics whose greatest love was to read books and talk about them with young people." He loves his beautiful wife and his spunky daughter, though he wishes she was less of a tomboy. That last is a spooky foreshadowing of the troubled heart of this unusual novel. One of Stall's colleagues commits suicide; he was being hounded by the Johns Committee, a gang of troglodytes out of Tallahassee determined to root out gays and communists. Stall is tasked by his bosses to get at what's going on. Since it's 1958, his job is doubly difficult?do those administrators really care about protecting the teachers? The answer arrives in a violent ending that modern readers may think is too long in coming. Others may welcome the digressions, including musings on Graham Greene's Catholicism and the failure of Marxism, as entertaining sideshows. Whether he's stoking his narrative or letting his mind wander, Watson writes crisp, beautiful prose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)