Furious Hours
by Casey Cep
- New
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- New/Fine
- ISBN 10
- 1101947861
- ISBN 13
- 9781101947869
- Seller
-
Carrollton, Texas, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
SIGNED. Stated First Edition. First printing with no additional printings listed. Signed by Casey Cep on the title page during an appearance/book signing at Alabama Booksmith. Unread book is tight and square with solid hinges, sharp tips and clean unmarred boards. Textblock is clean with no writing, bookplate or markings and not BCE, ex-library or remaindered. Dust jacket is unclipped ($26.95) and Fine. Protected in a new Brodart Mylar cover.
Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.
Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case.
Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country's most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity.
Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.
Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case.
Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country's most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity.
Reviews
On May 15 2019, a reader said:
4.5★s
"Lee had committed herself to a book built from facts, but when it came to the story of the Reverend Maxwell, those were hard to come by, and harder still to verify ... History isn't what happened but what gets written down, and the various sources that make up the archival record generally overlooked the lives of poor black southerners … A writer trying to fix the life of Reverend Willie Maxwell on the page was mostly at the mercy of oral history, which could be misremembered or manipulated or simply withheld from an outsider."
Furious Hours is a non-fiction book by American author, Casey Cep. In 1977, author Harper Lee attended, virtually incognito, the murder trial of Robert Louis Burns in Alexander City, Alabama. It was a fascinating case, and Lee, already known for To Kill A Mockingbird, and for her part in Truman Capote's true-crime classic, In Cold Blood, intended to write a book about it. She never did. Cep divides her account of this into three sections.
The Reverend was Reverend Willie Maxwell, and this section summarises his life and details the known facts about the six deaths in which he is thought to have a hand. Cep paints the backdrop for these deaths by giving the reader brief potted histories of: the area in Alabama where it all took place; life insurance policies and practices; the trade of pulpwooding; the development of forensic sciences in Alabama; and voodoo.
Maxwell's scheme with life insurance policies was well known from his first wife's death, so by the time the next family member, his older brother, John died: "According to his death certificate, John Columbus dies of a heart attack, caused by the overconsumption of alcohol; according to nearly the whole of Nixburg, John Columbus died of being a Maxwell."
The Attorney was Tom Radney, former politician, but by 1977, a successful full-time lawyer in Alexander City: "Big Tom was a walking Rolodex of bias and conflict; he knew who had been fired from what, where someone had worked before she got her current job, why one person would pardon an aggravated assault and another would want the death penalty for petty theft. He was the lawyerly version of the 'old woman' in W. J. Cash's Mind of the South, the one, 'with the memory like a Homeric bard's, capable of moving easily through a mass of names and relationships so intricate that the quantum theory is mere child's play in comparison.'"
He had represented Willie Maxwell in court for the trial for his first wife's murder as well as the myriad of contested insurance claims, but now he was representing the man who shot Maxwell in front of three hundred witnesses. "Five of the several dozen prospective jurors had to be dismissed right away, because, in addition to being summoned, they'd been subpoenaed: four were character witnesses for the defendant, and one was an eyewitness to the shooting. Those dismissals were telling. As with any small-town trial, the lawyers had to weigh not whether people knew one another but how well, in what way, and what degree of sympathy or antipathy."
The Writer was, of course, (Nelle) Harper Lee, and Cep offers a brief life history, concentrating on Lee's contribution to Capote's research for In True Blood, and then her writer's block, which her close friends and family hoped would be dispelled by her interest in the Maxwell Case. Lee spent almost a year in Alex City researching the non-fiction book she planned to write.
But apart from worrying that she might be sued, she faced other challenges: a "shortage of [verifiable] facts, the lack of an ideal protagonist, her unfamiliarity with the lives of African Americans, a certain uncomfortable muddiness concerning black criminality in a criminally racist society, and a related discomfort with her own deep delight in the self-serving mythologies of the southern gentry." This led, in later years, to Lee toying with turning it into fiction. The book, eagerly awaited by so many, never eventuated.
Cep's meticulous research is apparent on every page, and also evidenced by the comprehensive notes for each chapter and the extensive bibliography. A handy map complements the text. Cep's real talent, though, is presenting this wealth of information in an eminently readable form that will keep the reader enthralled despite knowing the ultimate outcome. Utterly captivating.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Penguin Random House
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Details
- Bookseller
- Armadillo Alley Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 2803
- Title
- Furious Hours
- Author
- Casey Cep
- Format/Binding
- Cloth
- Book Condition
- New New
- Jacket Condition
- Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition / First Printing
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 1101947861
- ISBN 13
- 9781101947869
- Publisher
- Alfred A. Knopf
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2019
- Keywords
- Harper Lee
- Bookseller catalogs
- First Editions; Signed Books;
Terms of Sale
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About the Seller
Armadillo Alley Books
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Carrollton, Texas
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