Buxton Books is excited to welcome author Roger Newman to the bookstore for a celebration of his new novel, Boys. Roger will be joined in conversation by journalist and author of Swamp Kings Jason Ryan.
We hope to see you there to learn more about the book, get a signed copy (or two), and raise a glass to this exciting new title! Doors open at 5:30 pm. Program begins at 6:00 pm.
This is a free, in-store event. Please email rsvp@buxtonbooks.com to reserve your spot!
About Boys:
BROTHERHOOD IS MORE THAN SKIN DEEP
Pete and Alex are brothers, raised together on a dairy farm in the Great Smokey Mountains during the Great Depression. Their hometown is beset by the ignorance and racial intolerance of the post-Reconstruction South. For the two boys, those challenges are magnified because Pete is white, and Alex is black.
As a boy, Alex takes refuge in the milking barn of the Forest Hill Dairy after the Rockingham County Klan murders his family. The Forest Hill Dairy is owned by “Poppa” Barnes, an abusive, emotionally remote Primitive Baptist preacher. “Poppa” Barnes allows Alex to remain on the dairy if, and only if, he is willing to work. About the same age, Pete Barnes accepts Alex as his brother, but to the remainder of the family, he is only “Boy.” Pete’s bond to Alex is strengthened by their crossing of their town’s color line.
Estranged from the rigid theology and racism of “Poppa” Barnes, the two boys leave home to join North Carolina’s Old Hickory Division in anticipation of war in Europe but are segregated again by Army policy. They do not see each other again until the pivotal Battle of Mortain where Alex heroically saves Pete’s life. In turn, Alex is grievously wounded and saved by Pete’s medical skills. Alex recovers in Margate, England but is re-wounded by the same bigotry and disrespect he had experienced prior to the war. Alex commits himself to discovering his own identity as a black man, no longer in the shadow of his white Barnes family.
Pete and Alex are finally reunited at Fort Jackson, S.C. in 1969. Now the Chief of the Military Police, Major Alex Broadnax, is responsible for investigating the brutal off-base beating of Colonel Pete Barnes, Chief of Womack Army Hospital. To solve the case, Major Broadnax must navigate the swirling racial waters of the 1960’s deep South, the hostility between military and civilian authorities, and his history with the Barnes family. Alex’s family knows nothing about his traumatic childhood, nor his white brother, and Alex must simultaneously protect them from the racial hostility that has always accompanied his “brotherhood” with Pete.
About Roger Newman:
Roger Newman is the author of the Dr. Declan Murphy series of medical thrillers, Occam’s Razor, Two Drifters, and What Becomes (longlisted for the Chanticleer Mystery and Mayhem Award) and the historical fiction novel, Will O’ the Wisp: Madness, War, and Recompense, featuring a Charleston - based Civil War blockade runner and answers the question of what became of the lost Confederate gold.
His most recent book is Boys and tells the story of two brothers who must confront the challenges of growing up in the Jim Crow South during the Great Depression, the bloody battles or World War II, and raising their families during the peak of the anti-war and civil rights movements of the late 1960s. These challenges are magnified for the two brothers because Pete is White and Alex is Black.
Dr. Newman is a nationally known Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology specializing in the care of women with multiple gestations. He has practiced his entire career in Charleston at the Medical University of South Carolina where he has enjoyed significant academic success, authoring more than 200 scientific papers, a dozen book chapters, and the award winning and bestselling book, When You’re Expecting Twins, Triplets or Quads; 4th Edition.
Dr Newman is a leader in his field having served as the national President for the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, as President of the South Carolina Obstetrical and Gynecologic Society, and has been voted by his peers as one of the “Best Doctors in America” for thirty consecutive years. Roger Newman and his wife, Diane, live on the Ashley River which their dog, Declan.
About Jason Ryan:
Jason Ryan is a nonfiction author and journalist in Charleston, South Carolina. His books include the drug-smuggling tell-all, Jackpot: High Times, High Seas and the Sting that Launched the War On Drugs and the murder story Swamp Kings: The Story of the Murdaugh Family of South Carolina and a Century of Backwoods Power, as well as two narratives about Hawaiian history. He is a veteran of South Carolina newspapers and currently writes for the Charleston Post and Courier.