"Fire Bell in the Night", A Review

In subtle hues, broad strokes, and attention to detail, Geoffrey S. Edwards' "Fire Bell in the Night" paints a grand portrait of a pre-Civil War South.

The setting, Charleston, South Carolina, is particularly fitting and Edwards brings to life its denizens with an adept hand. From the sailors, to the militia, to the innkeepers, slaves, free Blacks, and finally to the monied set - the planters and their families - Edwards manages to make each character, no matter how seemingly insignificant, breathe life and become real before the readers' eyes.

John Sharp is a green reporter from New York. He's sent to Charleston, during an oppressively hot summer of 1850, ostensibly to cover the trial of one Darcy Calhoun, a poor, white, farmer, who has been accused of harboring a fugitive slave. Sharp quickly discovers that on the surface the city appears genteel, serene, and beautiful in its lush Southern manner, yet just below that calm façade lies an entirely different - and decidedly more dangerous - layer of deception, betrayals, and tyrannies.

It is in the layers that Sharp becomes mired, and eventually, finds himself hopelessly trapped. He begins to question everyone and everything about him. It is in this questioning that Edwards draws the reader into the story, and in doing so brings to life a very harrowing chapter of American history. One will see the Civil War in a new light at the conclusion of this book, of that you can be certain.

"Fire Bell in the Night" is a grand statement. One that Mr. Edwards, with his love of history and attention to the minutest of details, makes emphatically and impressively. This is his first published novel, but it is by no means going to be his last. The future looks very bright for this incredibly talented writer. Very bright, indeed.