I’m happy to announce that I’ve signed with super agent Lisa Bankoff to represent my new novel, JACKSON. This has been a long time in coming so, yeah, I’m pleased. I’ll post any updates here. Meantime, here’s the pitch, in case you’re curious:
JACKSON takes its title from the small town of Jackson, Louisiana. The town’s best known as the site of the state’s first public mental hospital, and it was there, as the son of a psychiatrist, that I grew up, living and roaming on the grounds of the old asylum, hearing the screams of the patients at night. That unusual childhood experience provided the inspiration for this story.
JACKSON is a modern-day Frankenstein tale set against the backdrop of shocking, real-life brain implant experiments conducted on patients in Louisiana public mental hospitals in the 1960s. Told from the shifting points of view of Dr. Eugene Grant, a newly trained psychiatrist, and his young wife, Callie, the novel follows the couple and their son as they settle into a home on the grounds of Louisiana State Hospital, an immense, antiquated asylum in a remote corner of the state. Eugene, in thrall to the charismatic director of the hospital, is drawn deeper and deeper into the bizarre and bloody experiments they perform on their patients. At the same time, Callie grows increasingly suspicious of her husband’s work until, in a harrowing climax, she becomes a patient herself.
With shades of Southern Gothic, JACKSON also looks forward to contemporary issues of racism, sexism, and society’s treatment of its most vulnerable citizens, all the while grappling with the larger question of what it means to be sane in an insane world.