WILL SHETTERLY & EMMA BULL (Launch)
Wednesday Jul 25 2007 7:30 pm, Winnipeg, Grant Park Store, in Prairie Ink Restaurant
Launch of their newest fantasy novels, The Gospel Of The Knife and Territory. In ’s engrossing sequel to Dogland, 14 year old Christopher Nix discovers sex, drugs, and magic in a turbulent 1969 landscape, partly through the intercession of a mysterious benefactor. Man’s (and Chris’) complex relationship with God is explored.
Territory, retells the legend of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the fight at the O.K. Corral, as a background for an original cast of characters struggling in Tombstone. Jesse Fox, an itinerant horse tamer, Mrs. David Benjamin, a newspaper typesetter, the doctor Chow Lung, and Doc himself, all find themselves cornered by the magic leading to that fateful day.
The Gospel of the Knife
Christopher Nix is 14 years old, and it’s 1969. His life is a turbulent echo of the times as he discovers sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll in the heart of Florida. But into this struggle between the young long-haired hippie and the rednecks who’d just as soon kill him comes a strange offer that will completely change his life.
The Nix family is contacted by a mysterious benefactor who wants to send Chris to an exclusive private school, no expense spared. Mr. Jay Dumont claims that Chris’s grandfather saved his life during WWI, and though Grandpa Uvdall is dead, the debt remains to be paid. But as Chris will discover, there is a great deal more to it than that. He will have to accept and understand the Powers that have surrounded his family all his life, and learn to use his own magical gifts, if he is to survive Dumont’s plan.
As he did with Dogland, has used a deceptively simple tale to explore some very deep issues. The Gospel of the Knife explores questions of faith and responsibility, and the always complex relationship between man and God and the world.
Territory
Wyatt Earp. Doc Holliday. Ike Clanton.
You think you know the story. You don’t.
Tombstone, Arizona in 1881 is the site of one of the richest mineral strikes in American history, where veins of silver run like ley lines under the earth, a network of power that belongs to anyone who knows how to claim and defend it.
Above the ground, power is also about allegiances. A magician can drain his friends' strength to strengthen himself, and can place them between him and danger. The one with the most friends stands to win the territory.
Jesse Fox left his Eastern college education to travel West, where he’s made some decidedly odd friends, like the physician Chow Lung, who insists that Jesse has a talent for magic. In Tombstone, Jesse meets the tubercular Doc Holliday, whose inner magic is as suppressed as his own, but whose power is enough to attract the sorcerous attention of Wyatt Earp.
When a failed stage holdup results in two dead, Tombstone explodes with speculation about who attempted the robbery. The truth could destroy Earp's plans for wealth and glory, and he'll do anything to bury it. Meanwhile, outlaw leader John Ringo wants the same turf as Earp. Each courts Jesse as an ally, and tries to isolate him by endangering his friends, as they struggle for magical dominance of the territory.
Events are building toward the shootout of which you may have heard. But you haven't heard the whole, secret story until you've read Emma Bull's unique take on an American legend, in which absolutely nothing is as it seems...
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