Feb. 20, 2010 - Saturday Salon with Batt Humphreys

Charleston, South Carolina, 1910.  A Jewish merchant is dead, beaten to death in his shop.  A black man stands accused.  A New York journalist is in the city to cover the trial.   And a relocated New Orleans madam, an elderly grande dame, and a young black street urchin are on the case. 

Batt Humphreys is a former CBS news producer who returned to his home in the South several years ago.  He is, as a journalist, familiar with writing non-fiction, and has picked up a true story and written a powerful novel around it.  Based on events that actually transpired in Charleston in 1910, he has woven in some fictional characters and scenarios to create a moving and compelling story of race, cultural divide, and circumstance that grips the reader from the first page.  The result, Dead Weight, is a novel that is certain to become a modern day representative of Southern literature. 

Dead Weight portrays what would become the end of an era in Charleston and much of the South.  It is the end that could, and should, have arrived much earlier.  But, old ways die slow and hard and there are always those who long for the past and forebear to keep things the way they always were.  Humphreys shows us a side of the South most readers will rejoice now that it is past, yet gives us a sign of what is coming and what came to replace it. 

What most struck me with Dead Weight, with Batt Humphreys, was how it reminded me so very much of the writing of Dot Jackson, author of Refuge.  With the exception of some scenes in Refuge set in Charleston, there is no comparison with place, character, or even writing style.  Yet, the more I read Dead Weight, the more Dot Jackson came to mind.  Perhaps it is simply an aura cast by former journalists writing novels, but I think it is much more.  I think it is in the quality of the writing, the power of the story, and the ability to bring the reader into the story, that places these two southern authors on the same level.  That said, I believe Dead Weight, though a novel of the South, is more than a novel for the South.  It is a novel for everyone. 

Batt Humphreys will visit Literary Bookpost on Saturday, February 20^th, 1:30-3:30 p.m. for a reading and book signing.  We will host a reception for Batt at the end of his visit.  We hope to see you here for an opportunity to meet, and read, this up and coming Southern novelist.