A Gentleman in Charleston and the Manner of His Death

"Using language evocative of the period, the author carefully depicts a historical southern city where the past overshadows the present, and where personal codes of honor, designed to preserve decorum in polite society, ironically end up destroying it."—Booklist

"Strange, quirky, and always compelling, William Baldwin again proves himself to be a writer uniquely adept at bridging high art with the wild ride of a page-turning southern yarn. A Gentleman in Charleston and the Manner of His Death gives us Baldwin in top form, combining emotional drama with physical struggle for his impressively large and distinctly genuine cast of characters, all set against the sprawling historical backdrop of Charleston on the cusp of our modern age."—Bret Lott

"William Baldwin is that rare southern writer who writes for all people of all time. As I read his beautiful words in A Gentleman in Charleston and the Manner of His Death I walked the Holy City's streets with my ancestors and, believe me, I never wanted the trip to end. This is an important book and a wonderful rich story."—Dorothea Benton Frank

"Baldwin's novel is historical fiction at its most compelling: a story as full of suspense as of high literary merit. The texture of late-nineteenth-century Charleston is made palpable, from the grand houses around the Battery to the Negro slums, from the insularity of Old Families and Old Money to the lives of maids, governesses, prostitutes, and children, from the smoldering violence embedded in the code of honor to the ways of southern juries at the turn of the century."—Janette Turner Hospita