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"Edwards fills the gaps in the record of the Crisis of 1850 to
produce a plausible scenario that eloquently
captures the fear and rivalries of the antebellum era..."
-Publisher's Weekly
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Fire Bell in the Night by Geoffrey S. Edwards was published by Touchstone Books (a division of Simon & Schuster) in conjunction with Gather.com on September 18, 2007 after Edwards became a finalist in the First Chapters Writing Competition.
FIRE BELL IN THE NIGHT
It is late June and paranoia is rampant in Charleston following the murder of a South Georgia planter and his family by a small group of slaves. One of the killers remains at large. With a half-black population and as many as twenty mysterious fires per month, the city is in turmoil and civil order is breaking down. Charleston's ire finds a target - a white farmer caught harboring a fugitive slave. He will stand trial for his life.
Be prepared for twelve days of building suspense as John Sharp, a young New York reporter, is sent to cover the trial and finds himself caught up in the glamour and the horror of the antebellum South. It is a story of unlikely heroes and good men who do the unthinkable, as some try desperately to hold a nation together, while others would die for their patriotic right to dissolve it. Sharp must sift for the truth amid offers of friendship, manipulation, seduction and betrayal - oddly, in a tale with few villains. Fire Bell in the Night renders bittersweet the actual historical events which briefly forestalled Armageddon.
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