Reviews

The Blood of Heaven by Kent Wascom

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timgrubbs's review against another edition

3.0

An early 19th century chronicle of a southern family and its debacles…

The Blood of Heaven by Kent Wascom was the debut novel of the writer drawing from southern history.

I didn’t care for this. Not my thing.

It had a few interesting characters but the time jumps and some odd plot choices took me out of it…

alisonjfields's review against another edition

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2.0

I will read pretty much any novel in which that homicidal, racist, crazypants megalomaniac, Aaron Burr, makes a cameo. Especially if said novel is set in similarly crazypants 19th century Florida. I hoped this book would be slightly zany, picaresque historical highbrow pulp, but instead it was really more like what the Guy in Your MFA would write if he were really, really into Cormac McCarthy. Kent Wascom is clearly a smart guy, but boy howdy is this novel ever turgid. We're talking thick as Delta river silt that looks almost purple from some angles.

ridgewaygirl's review against another edition

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4.0

This is the story of Angel Woolsack, who came to an isolated and poverty-stricken community in 1776. He's alone with his father, his mother having died, and his father is a fire and brimstone preacher who disciplines his son by making him swallow live coals. Things only become more bleak and bloody from there, as Angel runs away from home, forming a partnership with two brothers, and taking their name as his own as they seek first to survive, through preaching and robbery, then to create a new country, called West Florida, with the help, they hope, of the American leader, Aaron Burr.

Kent Wascom has created a violent world, where the only way to survive is to embrace cruelty and to strike without mercy. This isn't a comfortable story with a happy ending, but it is riveting and blood-soaked, if that's what you're in the mood for.

cathyg12's review against another edition

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5.0

A weirdly gothic frontier tale set in a part of southern U.S. history that I knew little about. And the language! Every sentence is written in fire and brimstone that evokes the darkest parts of our "manifest destiny".

liadra's review against another edition

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3.0

Not quite what I expected, but not a bad read at all. It makes me fairly curious about the time it was written - I'm not really a history buff, but when books are set in periods, I always wonder how authentic details are.

jmatkinson1's review against another edition

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5.0

Angel Woolsack is the son of an itinerant Baptist preacher. Thrown off a riverboat without their belongings they pitch up in a scattered community of poor folk and minister to them. However Angel gets a girl pregnant and, when she is killed by her parents, his father turns on him so Angel escapes in the company of Sam Kemper becoming his adopted 'brother'. The Kemper brothers live outside the law in the frontier lands of West Florida until the Louisiana Purchase makes their land part of America but they have made enemies. Whilst Angel becomes rich and successful his life is not as straightforward as it could be.

The story of the Louisiana Purchase and life in the frontiers during the early 19th Century is not one which is often visited, for this reason I found the historical setting fascinating. However the quality of the writing of this book is what lifts it beyond mere historical fiction. This is Wascom's debut novel but it reads as though the author is an experienced hand who knows instinctively how to balance narrative, fantasy and fact with a very individual voice.