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Grievances
A Novel
Mark Ethridge
NewSouth Books
978-1-58838-192-7
$17.95 hardcover
6 x 9
278 pages
Published in 2006
Fiction
ebook ISBN: 978-60306-071-4
For more than twenty years, the murder of a thirteen-year-old boy during racial unrest in fictional Hirtsboro, South Carolina, has gone unpunished, unsolved, even uninvestigated. But that changes when Charlotte Times reporter Matt Harper sits down with an unlikely fellow who shows up in the newsroom, a guy with a grievance.
As he struggles with his journalistic legacy, Harper comes to understand why the investigation must be pursued and why he must be the one to do it—despite the opposition of his publisher, violent threats from mysterious forces who do not want the story told, and the revelation that his father is dying.
Grievances—written by newspaper industry veteran Mark Ethridge—draws the reader inside the fast-paced world of newspaper reporting, from bylines to deadlines to cryptic sources.
Set against the lush backdrop of a Savannah River town that time and justice have forgotten, Grievances takes a hard look at race relations in the South; decades after the end of segregation, the book examines how the wounds of inequality in the South have healed . . . and what wounds still remain. Grievances is a story of newspapers, murder, family, race, and of redemption—for a small Southern town and for Matt Harper. |
Reviews
“Mark Ethridge has captured the South in a way that is every bit as evocative as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and he has told a story as riveting as the best Grisham courtroom thriller. But Grievances is no mere thriller. It is a story of the heart that will resonate with readers long after they have turned the final page.”
—Pat Conroy, author of My Losing Season and Beach Music
“It is rare to come across a first novel as satisfying as Grievances. A thriller of the top order, it also displays a subtle understanding of race, of memory, and of the South. Mark Ethridge, a former reporter and editor himself, knows the territory about which he writes . . . what comes as a far greater pleasure is that he understands realms of the heart. This conjunction of tradition and psychology, meshed with truly breakneck, evocative prose, makes Grievances a book that can be appreciated both as a thriller and also for the deeper questions about society that it probes.”
—John Katzenback, author of Hart’s War, The Analyst, and The Madman’s Tale
“Grievances is a haunting blend of simple beauty and larger truths, intertwined with a gripping mystery and a lead character as heroic as he is cursed by his own past. Ethridge captures the gutty workings of big-city newspapers and small-town America as few authors ever have. The effect of it all is truly rare—a riveting tale of the South, uplifting and sorrowful and most of all timeless.”
—H. G. Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights
“Mark Ethridge’s debut novel should come with a warning label: Do not pick up this book right before bedtime or you’re liable to be up all night. What a satisfying read!”
—Cassandra King, author of Making Waves and The Same Sweet Girls
“Pulitzer Prize–winner Ethridge puts his experience as a reporter for the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer to good use in his first novel, which focuses on the efforts of his autobiographical hero to uncover the truth behind an unsolved murder. Matt Harper, a reporter for the Charlotte (N.C.) Times whose beat includes handling obituaries and the few stories of interest that crop up during the night shift, gets a break when his editor, Walker Burns, unwittingly gives him a shot at a major scoop. Bradford Hall, a well-to-do Yankee who now lives on his family's South Carolina plantation and respects the Times' reputation ‘for being concerned about justice,’ walks into the newspaper's offices one day to report that he's recently learned of a terrible crime—nearly 20 years earlier a 13-year-old black boy was shot in the head with a deer rifle in a tiny town near the plantation, and his killer was never found. Harper pushes Burns to allow him to investigate, and soon learns that the authorities at the time did virtually nothing.”
—Publishers Weekly
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