“Dawson’s Fall is a remarkable achievement . . . This is
masterful writing.”—Josephine Humphreys, author of Nowhere Else on Earth‟Robinson…has
discovered a story with as much to do with America’s present as America’s
past.”—Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post
‟Set pieces, such as the Hamburg riot, are riveting, showing how a
novelist can capture reality in a way that rouses a historian’s envy." —Harlan Greene, The
Post and Courier (Charleston)
“Robinson bases her
formidable novel on the lives of her great-grandparents, exposing the fragile
and horrific state of affairs in the American South two decades after the end
of the Civil War…. Robinson’s descriptive and imaginative prose sings; this
book is a startling reminder of the immoral and lasting brutality visited on
the South by the institution of slavery.”—Publishers Weekly
“Robinson uses lynchings,
duels, and sexual assaults to shed light on populism and toxic masculinity . .
. A stylish and contemplative . . . novel, considerate of facts but not
burdened by them.” —Kirkus Reviews(starred
review)
“Robinson’s documentary novel
intermingles fiction and family memoirs, period editorials, letters, and
journal entries in its penetrating rendition of key moments during the lives of
her great-grandparents. . . [Dawson’s Fall] proves unyielding and
compelling in its timely themes, with many depictions of how white men’s
seething resentment erupts into racist violence and how Southern codes of honor
and toxic values, particularly slavery, corroded individual lives and the
national character” —Booklist
“Roxana Robinson is a great
American storyteller and never better than when she braids history and fiction,
pulling truth out of mere facts. Dawson’s Fallgrips us with fascinating
characters, great and small, caught in the powerful unfolding of events that
have shaped our country, and Robinson’s own wise, clear-eyed, and heartfelt
narrative.”—Amy Bloom, author of White
Houses
“Acclaimed writer Roxana
Robinson delves into her own family history as she sets her sights on the Civil
War at its very heart, South Carolina, with spectacular results. Like Charles
Frazier’s Cold Mountain,her own Dawson’s
Fall will be a revelation to many readers in its profound and nuanced
depiction of Southerners’ widely varied feelings about the Civil War and its
aftermath. The past springs brilliantly to life in this tragic and compelling
story, as accurate and fully realized a depiction of daily life and the
extraordinary events of this time as has ever been written.”—Lee Smith, author of Dimestore: A Writer’s Life
“Dawson’s Fallis a riveting historical account of one man’s
struggle against a wave of violence and injustice during Reconstruction. The
research that Roxana Robinson has done to deliver this story is nothing short
of masterful and revisiting this terrifying and ugly chapter in the history of
the South could not be more timely. Robinson's complex characters, her
knowledge and loyalty to truth, and her rich depiction of time and place
preserve not only her family story but that of American society and all that threatens
humanity.”—Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life
“Roxana Robinson tells the moving story of her great
grand-parents, who lived in Charleston after the Civil War, her
great-grandfather an Englishman and editor of the city paper. She draws on letters,
journals and newspaper articles about them and adds her own novelistic grace to
make them come to life. With a fine eye for detail, she describes the horrors
of the post-war period of racism and violence they could not escape.”—Frances FitzGerald, author of The Evangelicals
“In Dawson’s Fall, acclaimed author Roxana Robinson has
turned her own family history into a propulsive novel. She unspools the story
of Frank Dawson, a Confederate veteran struggling to redefine the South, an
Englishman in a land thick with suspicion of outsiders. With complicated
characters and a rich sense of time and place, this is an immersive tale about
the meaning of America.”—T. J. Stiles, author of Custer’s Trials: A Life on the
Frontier of a New America
A cinematic Reconstruction-era drama of violence and fraught moral
reckoning
In Dawson’s Fall, a novel based on the lives of Roxana
Robinson’s great-grandparents, we see America at its most fragile, fraught, and
malleable. Set in 1889, in Charleston, South Carolina, Robinson’s tale weaves
her family’s journal entries and letters with a novelist’s narrative grace, and
spans the life of her tragic hero, Frank Dawson, as he attempts to navigate the
country’s new political, social, and moral landscape.
Dawson, a man of fierce opinions, came to this country as a young
Englishman to fight for the Confederacy in a war he understood as a conflict
over states’ rights. He later became the editor of the CharlestonNews and
Courier, finding a platform of real influence in the editorial column and
emerging as a voice of the New South. With his wife and two children, he tried
to lead a life that adhered to his staunch principles: equal rights, rule of
law, and nonviolence, unswayed by the caprices of popular opinion. But he
couldn’t control the political whims of his readers. As he wrangled diligently
in his columns with questions of citizenship, equality, justice, and slavery,
his newspaper rapidly lost readership, and he was plagued by financial worries.
Nor could Dawson control the whims of the heart: his Swiss governess became
embroiled in a tense affair with a drunkard doctor, which threatened to stain
his family’s reputation. In the end, Dawson―a man in many ways representative
of the country at this time―was felled by the very violence he vehemently
opposed.
