A Lingering Shadow

"Lingering Shadow" is a novel of tremulous hopes and tremendous anticipation that's built up over 5 years of study at Chapel Hill where many things fall into place with an almost surreal delicacy. It relates to an anguished academic for whom unwelcome truths bubble up from some dark cavern, engaging the emotions and the intellect simultaneously. The story moves fluidly through the texture in a culture that's swirling with nostalgia, deception, and promise. It is a humane tale of a researcher stumbling in a dim glow that could be dawn or twilight. It is a novel with a tour of science, culture, and I creeping politics into science, and about the tenacity and mystery of faith. Written in uncluttered style, it enhances the stark quality of the human situation. The language is nostalgic, decently harmonic, and romantic in its sensibility. The solitude of the character, though absolute, is not monotonous. It seems to have different colors, shadings, subtle dynamics; it's an organism with a life of its own. It embodies the theme of metamorphosis. Rich in character and varied incidents and straying with pieces of memory, experience and anticipation into a civilization's fabric, the novel also finds some room for heart.

Several months after arriving home from her service as a United States Army Signal Corps operator in the Great War, Arabella Stewart’s major goals are saving her family’s resort and boosting her hometown, both of which suffered during the war and flu pandemic. Opening day of the summer season begins with optimism but ends with a murdered guest. Eager to solve the crime quickly and avoid negative publicity for the resort, Bella again volunteers to help Constable Jackson Hastings, her dead brother Matt’s best friend and former comrade-in-arms, investigate. Jax resists at first, but with his department shorthanded and his war wounds hampering him, he accepts her assistance. Finding the killer must be a primary concern, but so is Bella’s safety. As Bella and Jax pursue answers, they confront lingering shadows over the suspects, the victim, the resort, the town, and themselves.

Students of American history know of the law’s critical role in systematizing a racial hierarchy in the United States. Showing that this history is best appreciated in a comparative perspective, The Long, Lingering Shadow looks at the parallel legal histories of race relations in the United States, Brazil, and Spanish America. Robert J. Cottrol takes the reader on a journey from the origins of New World slavery in colonial Latin America to current debates and litigation over affirmative action in Brazil and the United States, as well as contemporary struggles against racial discrimination and Afro-Latin invisibility in the Spanish-speaking nations of the hemisphere. Ranging across such topics as slavery, emancipation, scientific racism, immigration policies, racial classifications, and legal processes, Cottrol unravels a complex odyssey. By the eve of the Civil War, the U.S. slave system was rooted in a legal and cultural foundation of racial exclusion unmatched in the Western Hemisphere. That system’s legacy was later echoed in Jim Crow, the practice of legally mandated segregation. Jim Crow in turn caused leading Latin Americans to regard their nations as models of racial equality because their laws did not mandate racial discrimination— a belief that masked very real patterns of racism throughout the Americas. And yet, Cottrol says, if the United States has had a history of more-rigid racial exclusion, since the Second World War it has also had a more thorough civil rights revolution, with significant legal victories over racial discrimination. Cottrol explores this remarkable transformation and shows how it is now inspiring civil rights activists throughout the Americas.

Abigail Grace Bruckner grew up with the Feaganes after her brother Jeb shot and killed their birth mother. Subsequent to the abuse Jeb endured as a child, he evolved into a savage serial killer, culminating in his violent death. Abby studied law, became a cop, and presently attempts to follow her foster brother Sean, into SWAT. Now, someone is stalking her, determined to enact revenge for Jeb's bloody carnage. A killer with unfinished business is on the prowl. Sean's close friend, Tanner Blake, SWAT, becomes her roommate, bodyguard and love interest. With a little help from Jeb's discarnate spirit, and a few tricks up his translucent sleeves, they try to thwart the stalker's attempts. Replete with suspense, romance, conflict, intrigue, humor with a twist of paranormal.