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Edgar Winner Phillip DePoy's New Novel:
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| Storytelling at its best. KIRKUS starred review |
KIRKUS STARRED REVIEW:
THE DRIFTERíS WHEEL
by Phillip DePoy
Mountain folk taunt a folklorist by wandering down a corridor of eternity. Fever Devilin, who reluctantly returned to
Blue Mountain, Ga., when his Atlanta university excised his folklore department (A Widow's Curse, 2007, etc.), is visited
one night by a man claiming to have killed his own brother. Not recently, mind you, but in the Civil War era. Many stories
later this same man claims to have killed his brother again during World War I. Now he's back again to have a third go at
him. He sprints away before Devilin can grasp either him or his full story. The next Devilin hears of his visitor, Sheriff
Skidmore Needle wants Devilin to identify the man's dead body. The victim, however, turns out not to be the confessed killer,
but someone who looks enough like the killer to pass for his brother. Strangely, Hovis Daniels, an old-timer living in a shack
on property belonging to the time traveler's kinfolk, and Devilin's fiancee Lucinda, a hospital nurse, have also been visited.
Thus begins a race through revenant country, in which brothers smite each other, families pass down gold-in-these-hills legends
and holding on to prisoners and sanity is complicated by apple brandy moonshine. Storytelling at its best: a beguiling mystery
that's almost impossible to figure out or put down. And if you're looking for wit, check out the exchanges between Devilin
and his pal Winton Andrews.
PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY:
At the start of DePoy's atmospheric fifth novel to feature folklorist Fever Devilin (after 2007's A Widow's Curse), an
intense and nervous young man claiming to be 100 years old arrives at Devilin's home in the Georgia Appalachians. The visitor
vividly recounts his time in the brothels in Chicago when the tango was new and his experiences in the trenches of WWI. But
when the man starts waving a gun around just before slipping into a narcoleptic sleep, Devilin thinks it best to call in expert
assistance. The stranger disappears before the sheriff arrives; several hours later, the body of a drifter turns up nearby
wearing the same clothes as Devilin's visitor. Devilin is determined to solve the crime and uncover whether the murder victim
and the peculiar storyteller are one and the same. Unsettling and engaging throughout, this solidly enjoyable tale will keep
readers guessing until the end. (July)
FIRST PARAGRAPH:
"The gun exploded, blood erupted, and Jacob lay dying on the brothel floor." My visitor coughed. "There's
the way to start a story. None of this 'hair was flaxen by candle light' or 'night as black as an empty grave.' Start with
the murder. Let the rest of it unfold, like history. Sometimes history turns on that little: a single moment, a single bullet."
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