{"product_id":"dangerous-times","title":"Dangerous Times","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis book's background is the prophetic but overlooked decade of American history, 1846 to 1856, from the Mexican War to the presidential election of James Buchanan. The decade was a foreshadowing of our national cataclysm. Underlying every social aspect was the nation's fatal flaw, slavery, that perverted the Constitution on which the Enlightenment ideals of a \"United States\" were based. And on every day, similarities to the distortions of the present decade are obvious.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e I chose a Southern ethos, finding an unexpected woman to suffer and survive the decade; and three brothers, each of whom carves a unique path through it, one as a fugitive unjustly accused of murder and slave-stealing, one as an enigmatic operative across the jagged spectrum of antebellum party politics, and the eldest who inherits his family's storied tobacco plantation as its lands burn out.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e The story is told chronologically, the fiction adhering to the history. Should a question arise as to which is which, any event of historical significance - no matter how bizarre or implausible -- did indeed happen.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e The novel echoes ethnic truths as they were at the time. I write of intimacies as well as horrors found in historical records. Both public and private relations were often infused with their own destruction -- as were the expanding \"United States\" in that decade, and I fear in this one. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"William Kinsolving","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46573425066220,"sku":"9781966799184","price":23.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":46573425098988,"sku":"9781966799191","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0684\/1791\/3068\/files\/9781966799184.jpg?v=1750750828","url":"https:\/\/intl.allstora.com\/products\/dangerous-times","provider":"Allstora","version":"1.0","type":"link"}