A Democracy of Ghosts (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A DEMOCRACY OF GHOSTS is the love story of four couples, set against the backdrop of the Herrin Massacre of 1922. This clash of miners and strikebreakers in Bloody Williamson County, in Southern Illinois, resulted in the deaths of 21 men -- 19 of them the "scabs" tortured and murdered by average men, women, and even children in what was once the most radical community in America. John Griswold has drawn from contemporary eyewitnesses and news accounts, an ethnography of the area, histories, and his own grandfather's letters to create the lives of four fictional couples whose ambitions, self-doubts, and social and sexual jealousies contribute to this great American violence that still echoes down through time. "At times disturbing and tragically violent, always insightful, poignant and uncompromising, Griswold's riveting narrative is filled with complex mean and women bursting with life. Fast-paced and powerful, GHOSTS is an original rise told by a masterful writer." -- Duff Brenna, author of THE BOOK OF MAMIE and THE LAW OF FALLING BODIES "Readers may uncomfortably identify with the characters in GHOSTS because they are not bigger than life, have many fallacies and no scruples. Neither saints nor sinners, but possessing the qualities of both, the characters of A DEMOCRACY OF GHOSTS are liars, cheaters, killers, torturers, and opportunists; at the same time, they are loving, humorous, protective, and very human." -- Lee Gooden, FOREWORD MAGAZINE, July 2009 "With iron and blood, it seems, and from the rich depths of the earth, John Griswold has fashioned a classic American novel, its dignified intonations of our young nation's sweat and tears evocative of the indelible storytelling of Dos Passos, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair." -- Bob Shacochis

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Wordcraft of Oregon, LLC (July 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1877655635
• ISBN-13: 978-1877655630
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #367,178 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautiful Page Turner, June 25, 2009

By	kcummins - See all my reviews

"We call ourselves Little Egypt, and we were born to greatness; that was manifest." So beautifully begins the collective narrator of Williamson County and John Griswold's "A Democracy of Ghosts." With an intensity that keeps you on edge from start to finish, "Ghosts" begins with love, ends in massacre, and includes some sex, humor, and unbridled craziness in between. Gripping and melodious, Griswold's prose pulls the reader into the minds of the townspeople living in Southern Illinois during 1922. Told from alternating perspectives, its Griswold's relatable characters that make this book such a compelling read.

Thirty-three years old, cocky but innocent, Jim O'Rourke takes a job as a strikebreaker then spends his time writing letters to Mercy, the girl back home. Griswold pitches O'Rourke's gullibility against the eccentric antics of Prochnow whose fun, but sadistic humor leads to deadly consequences. Self-motivated, but still stricken over the loss of her first-born, Sally's grief is set against Bully Greathouse's jealousy and insecurities. Highly respected and trying to maintain order as tempers rise, protagonist William J. Sneed's affair with Shelley Brown puts his marriage to the test. Meanwhile, Cora Sneed attempts to assert her personal power, while, Shelley Brown, in turn, yearns for a new and better life.

These character's interwoven lives, contradictory flaws and desires collide with the tensions between miners and strikebreakers, resulting in the historic events of the Herrin Massacre. Written with objectiveness worthy of Chekhov, it's difficult to surmise whose actions Griswold's condemning. Instead, he sets the motives of the characters in motion, and allows the reader to play judge, jury, and executioner, making "A Democracy of Ghosts" one of those books you won't be able to put down.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine, lyrical-historical novel about a violent 1922 Illinois coal mine strike, June 25, 2009

By	Michael - See all my reviews

I would call A Democracy of Ghosts a lyrical historical novel, beautifully written and rich with precise imagery and revelatory meditations. The novel's imagery is quite accessible, however, and the meditations never long-winded: both issue from the material world, lives, loves, and moral compass of a set of characters with whom the reader is encouraged to identify. The larger historical events (violent mine strike) are completely tangled up with the intimate lives of the central characters (rocky marriages, betrayals, ugly acts of loyalty, lots more: sex and violence and also familial affection). You're put into that time and place by judicious use of turns of speech or naming of things that involve unfamiliar vocabulary (anachronistic or regional terms, or else the things themselves have become obscure over the past century); this never impedes one's reading. Analytic or philosophical remarks--usually emanating from one of the focal characters--are generally brief, wry, and right on target, like when the novel's chief character is in church and thinking through his problems: "He got his best thinking done in church and during band concerts. It was one of the glories of a society, sharing an event you all ignored together."

The novel informs us about the Herrin Massacre of 1922 and the "trial of the century" that followed, but it's more about refracting that appalling episode of American history through the minds of a set of participants (including murderous ones). Still, you learn what happened, and you get the idea that (1) this was a signal moment in the labor history of the U.S.; (2) that what happened in Herrin did not lead to justice or atonement, and has never been properly processed; (3) that this was the last hurrah of the area of Southern Illinois known as "little Egypt," which had boomed long before Chicago as a rail and river transit center, and which at the time the novel is set was an important center for the mining of soft coal and associated labor organizing; (4) that the people who committed atrocities (described in imagery that at times faintly reminded of the Holocaust: trains, barbed wire) are more like you and me than might be comfortable for the reader. Bringing out this similarity seems to be a central point of the novel, and it is facilitated by the way the author handles narrative point of view and voice, which sticks very closely to his characters.

Again and again the reader is slotted into the point of view of a character who quickly grows morally problematic. The novel's prologue opens with in the first person plural: "We call ourselves Little Egypt, and we were born to greatness..."; but that "we" is really a "them" to the reader, those folks feel quite distant. This changes as the novel progresses, and after the slaughter, in a new twist on the "we" with which the novel opened, the reader is addressed directly and told s/he is part of that "we": "Listen: you won't like this much, but by reading this far you never stopped any of this either, so you're one of us now. And for that reason alone we deserve some small sympathy and understanding." When the author is overtly present at times (as in the citation immediately above), making analytical remarks that exceed the consciousness of characters to whom the narration is attached at the moment, the seamlessness of this is a real technical feat.

Another big stylistic feature is the novel's often elliptical mode of presentation. Sometimes it takes a moment to catch on, to figure out what's been left out; but you always can, and the overall effect, I think, is in synch with the handling of point of view: it's a very subjective, interior-monologue-ish narration that heightens our sense that this is a particular character verbalizing the world for him/herself. Other themes to watch: memory and forgetting (see all the related scenes of writing, in a journal, letters, newspapers, etc.). In one example of the novel's poetic logic, the democracy of ghosts named in the its title is echoed in the description of the cemetery where the brutal massacre is consummated: "The plots were filled with Herrins, Stotlars, and other founding names, and an American flag waved by the arched entrance. It was a beautiful place, a republic of stones." A democracy of ghosts: what we would rather not acknowledge, unwanted memories, returns of the dead; a republic of stones: the monumental, imaginary self, commemorating and reinforcing the image of who we want to seem to be.

Reading this novel made me think of recent talk of coal again being as big as it once was in Southern Illinois, with the help of new technologies for carbon sequestration that might lessen the environmental impact (global warming). And then I pictured all those gasses, buried deep in the earth, somehow getting back to the surface and wreaking havoc. Well, the novel does it much better, of course: "No, Sneed thought, usually we pump in water and sulfur to drown the memories. Then we cover the past over with bullshit and grow jokes on top. But the very ground under our feet is riddled with the wormholes, and sometimes entire houses fall into them."

It's a really good novel!