Dawson's Fall by Roxana Robinson

Dawson's Fall by Roxana Robinson

A cinematic Reconstruction-era drama of violence and fraught moral reckoning

In Dawson's Fall, a novel based on the lives of Roxana Robinson's great-grandparents, we see America at its most fragile, fraught, and malleable. Set in 1889, in Charleston, South Carolina, Robinson's tale weaves her family's journal entries and letters with a novelist's narrative grace, and spans the life of her tragic hero, Frank Dawson, as he attempts to navigate the country's new political, social, and moral landscape.

Dawson, a man of fierce opinions, came to this country as a young Englishman to fight for the Confederacy in a war he understood as a conflict over states' rights. He later became the editor of the Charleston News and Courier, finding a platform of real influence in the editorial column and emerging as a voice of the New South. With his wife and two children, he tried to lead a life that adhered to his staunch principles: equal rights, rule of law, and nonviolence, unswayed by the caprices of popular opinion. But he couldn't control the political whims of his readers. As he wrangled diligently in his columns with questions of citizenship, equality, justice, and slavery, his newspaper rapidly lost readership, and he was plagued by financial worries. Nor could Dawson control the whims of the heart: his Swiss governess became embroiled in a tense affair with a drunkard doctor, which threatened to stain his family's reputation. In the end, Dawson--a man in many ways representative of the country at this time--was felled by the very violence he vehemently opposed.

Edith Wharton (1862--1937) published more than forty volumes of novels, short stories, verse, essays, travel books, and memoirs. She was born into a distinguished New York family and was educated privately in the United States and abroad. Among her best-known work is Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and The Age of Innocence, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Roxana Robinson is the author of the three novels Sweetwater, (2003) This Is My Daughter, (1998) and Summer Light (1988); the three short story collections A Perfect Stranger, (2005) Asking for Love, (1996) A Glimpse of Scarlet, (1991) and the biography Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life, (1989). Four of these were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. She has received fellowships from the NEA, the MacDowell Colony, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Robinson's fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper's and Vogue. She lives in New York City and Westchester County, New York.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780374135218
ISBN 10	0374135215
Title	Dawson's Fall
Author	Roxana Robinson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Sarah Crichton Books
Year published	2019-05-14
Number of pages	352
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.