RAPPAWAN- The narrator has spent his life in an impoverished rural community at the base of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains on his beloved river, the Rappawan. He is dismayed by the painful, fatal bow-and-arrow wounding of a mother bear and, acutely sensitive to nature and threats posed to his formerly unspoiled rural environment, decides to do something about it.

He’s surprised by the return of a free-spirited young woman with a little girl who proves to be his granddaughter. Renewed in purpose, he assumes responsibility for the family he never had and decides to murder the drug dealer threatening his newfound happiness.

TREGARON SPRINGS - A prequel to the highly acclaimed Nose, this novel plunges the reader into the rarefied world of a prestigious estate in a fictional Napa Valley and the three beautiful sisters who inherited it. The youngest, Trew Vassy, navigates the rivalry between her older siblings as she tries to save not only the winery and the unspoiled wilderness surrounding it but also the fortunes of the immigrants who have devoted their lives to Tregaron Springs.

The sisters’ parents died in a plane crash in the vineyard and Trew suspects that her real father is the retired Mexican winemaker. The arrival of Clyde Craven-Jones as a young, sexy English wine critic further complicates a story rich in discovery and pathos.

SINCE MY BABY LEFT ME - The setting is 1950s Memphis and the privileged white world of booze, golf, and adultery. Serving it is Harmon Brown, a washed-up black musician once locally famous who knew Robert Johnson and other legendary bluesmen.

Now reduced to a waiter at the Memphis Country Club, Harmon is accused of sitting in the white section of a lunch counter uptown, beaten by police and thrown into jail. Tuke Harrington, a prominent attorney and former football star, takes pity and defends Harmon against the wishes of all his friends and Boss, the mayor who runs Memphis.

Tuke and Harmon’s unlikely alliance results in the burning of Harmon’s little house but also the inadvertent, brief resurrection of Harmon’s career. James Conaway has published four novels, including The Big Easy and the best-selling Last Tango in Paris.

The three short novels in this volume he considers his best, further examinations of earlier themes - the importance of place and the search for the father (Rappawan, Tregaron Springs), and racial injustice in the American South (Since My Baby Left Me). Tregaron Springs is the prequel to his popular novel, Nose, set in a fictional version of the Napa Valley.

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