DELIRIUM OF THE BRAVE

Old-fashioned multigenerational saga of buried treasure, hidden sin, and the redemptive power of religion and family, set in balmy Savannah. Originally issued last year by a small press, podiatrist Harris’s story is mostly an inspirational fathers-and-sons melodrama involving two Irish-Catholic Savannah families: the aristocratic and righteous Driscoll-Hartmans and the scrambling, parvenu O’Boyles. The story begins during the Civil War, when Captain Patrick Driscoll Jr., accompanied by his faithful slave Shadrach, hides the Driscoll family fortune in a jewel box on Raccoon Island, where Driscoll commands a Confederate island gun emplacement with the hopes of repulsing a Union attack on Savannah’s harbor. Both men die (Shadrach hugging his expiring master) without revealing the treasure’s location. Shadrach’s grandson, Abednigo, later hides his moonshine still on the island, while arriviste J.J. O’Boyle grows rich and politically powerful as a whiskey smuggler. Later, when hotheaded political reporter John Hartman, who’s married to Beth Dietz, the last of the Driscolls, checks into J.J.’s shady deals, J.J. forces Hartman to resign from the newspaper. Meanwhile, Anthony O—Boyle’s slightly retarded brother, Al, becomes a serial killer. Anthony’s solution to that problem, along with subsequent caddishness from Anthony’s son, Tony Jr., contrast with the naive goodness of Hartman, now a journalism teacher, and of his son, John-Morgan, who manages to stay a virgin throughout high school and the Vietnam War, where his wounds and his failure to marry the girl of his dreams almost make him lose his religion; meanwhile, Lloyd Bryan, son of the impoverished and estranged Abednigo, becomes a pro-football star but then renounces his success to become a priest and work with Savannah’s poor. Is it fate (or maybe the possibility of salvation?) that brings the gang—now middle- aged—back to Raccoon Island to dig up old sins and long-lost treasure? Cluttered, repetitious, yet ultimately uplifting reaffirmation of southern gentility, fair play, and blind faith. ($100,000 ad/promo; author tour)