Nashville Burning
Nashville Burning

Publisher: TCU Press, October 2017

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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.
Reviews of Nashville Buring
Ann Weisgarber, Author of The Promise and The Personal History of Rachel DuPree
"Gerald Duff pulls off the impossible in Nashville Burning. Set during the late-1960's, Duff eloquently and skillfully combines equal doses of humor, satire, and honesty to create a powerful and fresh take on America's civil rights movement. As Nashville smolders, so do the lives of the characters. Only Duff has the writing chops, insight, and nerve to tackle the crumbling of the Southern vanguard with such freshness. Bravo!"

Madison Smartt Bell, Author of more than a dozen novels, including his trilogy of novels about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution
"Gerald Duff’s Nashville Burning is a rollicking satire of a turbulent time; it leaves no sacred cow unstoned, and in that sense is bound to offend practically everybody!  It might also wake a few people up."

Lyda Phillips, Veteran journalist and the author of two young-adult novels
"Nashville Burning provides neither heroes nor victims; the characters are just flawed folks trapped in their discrete worlds, terrified and unequipped to move into the future."

Steven Whitton, The Anniston Star
"The strength of Nashville Burning is in its not attempting to replicate historical figures so much as in its success at recreating—with a satirical gaze backwards—a fictional world for those real characters to inhabit as supporting characters."

Texas Book Lover
Award-winning author and Texas native Gerald Duff is one of the most versatile writers working today. ... No matter the genre or time or form, Duff always delivers. ... This tale of strife in the late 1960s is fine social satire, a sardonic send-up of campus politics, and sharp-edged portrait of generational conflict. The grave issues so entertainingly explored in Nashville Burning are still hot today.

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