A work of alternative history, A Savage Wisdom changes the story of Toni Jo Henry into a redemptive parable—a study in deception and personality transformation.

The novel also dramatizes rumors surrounding the young beauty’s deathrow dalliance with a handsome young sheriff.

In this treatment, Toni Jo escapes the Great Depression and moves toward a world full of promise, only to be dragged into the alluring but dangerous underworld of New Orleans.

These maneuvers place the novel in company with In Cold Blood, Truman Capote’s book that launched the genre of “faction,” fiction based on fact.

Softcover, 277 pages.  New second edition.

Published by Dville Press, Donaldsonville, Louisiana

--

About Norman German

Dr. Norman German is an English professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he is the fiction editor of Louisiana Literature. His short stories about fishing, track and field, and baseball appear in literary and commercial magazines, including Shenandoah, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Sport Fishing, Gray's Sporting Journal, and Salt Water Sportsman, which also published his essay "Rehabilitating Hemingway."