Gerald Duff

In this account, Elvis Presley's twin brother, Jesse, does not die at birth, but lives to serve his brother. He protects Elvis from school bullies, gets him his first talent show, fills in for him on the Ed Sullivan Show, even makes love to Elvis' wife when Elvis is not up to it. By the author of Indian Giver.

Sam Houston Leaping Deer is a Alabama-Coushatta Indian transported by his transcendent basketball talent from the reservation in East Texas to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (the Fighting Illini), where he immediately becomes a star. Gerald Duff's powerful work of satire, humor, and tragedy tells the story of Sam's encounter with the white man's world of greed and deception. While encountering a cross-section of sixties academia, he retains his inner world of Coushatta legends and traditions, a contradiction that forms the power of this memorable novel.

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.

"In the midst of the Great Depression, minor league baseball thrives in small-town South Louisiana, where the Evangeline League, named in honor of Longfellow?s heroine, draws hundreds to dirt fields and grandstands in places like Jeanerette, Abbeville, and Opelousas. In 1935 Gemar Batiste, a talented young pitcher from Texas, is recruited to try out for the Rayne Rice Birds, makes the roster, and immediately begins garnering fame for himself, his team, and the league"--Cover page 4.

"Decoration Day and Other Stories ranges in locale from the piney woods of Deep East Texas, to the mean streets of Memphis, to the suburbs of Washington, DC. Highly comic and deeply serious, the collection reaches from the late 19th century to the present day"--Texas A&M University Press & the Texas Book Consortium website.

Lee Smith calls Blue Sabine "a big, spellbinding novel, as deep and complex as the Texas river for which it's named. The mystery and relevance of the past is Gerald Duff's great theme, as he masterfully traces one family's history from the Civil War to the present day."