The Feast Day of the Cannibals by Norman Lock

Norman Lock's sixth book in the American Novel Series delves into the ugly side of the Gilded Age. 

With a window view of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, Shelby Ross visits his old friend Washington Robling, who is incapacitated, his capable wife overseeing the construction of the bridge his father designed. Ross tells his sad story to Robling, his fall from fortune forcing him to seek work, and the events that led to his imprisonment.

Having lost his business in the depression, Ross found employment at the Customs House, working under Herman Melville, a bitter, failed novelist. Ross also works with a dreamy younger man who pursues a friendship, while another co-worker, a sinister older man, harasses them as suspect homosexuals.

A man of numbers and business, Ross reads Melville's forgotten books and Moby Dick comes to influence him in dark ways. Ross passively plays into the hands of his nemesis, until his rage drives him to commit a crime of passion.

The Gilded Age world comes to life. It is populated with legendary people: Ross comes into contact with Mark Twain, who encourages a dying and broke Gen. Grant to write his memoirs to provide income to his beloved wife Julia. 

This is a dark novel of evil and hatred, of failed dreams, the bitterness of life's unjustness, and the many ways humans are all cannibals at heart.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher:

Feast Day of the Cannibals charts the harrowing journey of a tormented heart during America’s transformative age.

Feast Day of the Cannibals

by Norman Lock

Bellevue Literary Press

Publication: July 16, 2019

ISBN: 9781942658467, 194265846Xk

$16.99 USD, $22.99 CAD, £12.99 GBP

Norman Lock on the American Novel Series:

Through my American novels, I hope to understand, a little, the present American era by what came before and shaped its thought, beliefs, prejudices, virtues, vices, and emotional undertow.  --from the publisher's website.

I have enjoyed several of Norman Lock's American Novel Series. Read my reviews at:

The Wreckage of Eden
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-wreckage-of-eden-by-norman-lock.html

A Boy in His Winter
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2018/06/a-boy-in-his-winter-by-norman-lock.html