Nashville Burning: A Novel

Gerald Duff

TCU Press, 2017 - Fiction - 318 pages

Nashville Burning is set in three Aprils, those of 1967, '68, and '69, in Music City. In the first, after an event at Vanderbilt University featuring Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Allen Ginsburg, and Strom Thurmond, riots broke out in North Nashville, and that part of town burst into flame--as did self-satisfied notions about civil order and structure in Nashville and the South. The next April, after the assassination of Dr. King in Memphis, Nashville riots took place again, and fire claimed its function.

Nashville Burning presents characters caught up in those events and that time--events ranging from the thoughtful and sincerely well meaning to the truly felonious and certifiably insane. The novel is humorous, yet serious. Its fire is literal and emotional, and it is not to be stoked.

About the author

GERALD DUFF won the award for the best book of fiction about Texas, Blue Sabine, from the Philosophical Society of Texas; the Cohen Prize for Fiction from Ploughshares Magazi≠ and the Silver Medal for fiction from the Independent Publishers Association. His novel Playing Custer from TCU Press was named a finalist for the Spur Award for the best historical fiction of 2015. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Duff has published twenty books. His memoir Home Truths: A Deep East Texas Memory was published by TCU Press in 2011.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Nashville Burning: A Novel
• Author: Gerald Duff
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: TCU Press, 2017
• ISBN: 0875656676, 9780875656670
• Length: 318 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / African American & Black / Historical; Fiction / General; Fiction / Historical / General; Fiction / Southern