A Wonderful Review from PP Customer Jayne Kyl

German, Norman. A Savage Wisdom

An imaginative reconstruction of the life of the only woman executed in Louisiana's electric chair from Thunder Rain Publishing Corp

Toni Jo Henry, born Annie Beatrice Mc Quiston, was a prostitute, drug addict and murderess who, in 1942, became the first and only woman to be executed in Louisiana's electric chair. In A Savage Wisdom, Norman German's fictionalized Toni Jo is a beautiful young innocent whose boredom with small town life makes her an easy target for the flimflam man who plucks her from the Time-Out Cafe and promises her the moon. In what he refers to as an "imaginative reconstruction" of the real Toni Jo, German gives us a character driven to murder by a tormenter who schools her in the demons of obsession, humiliation and betrayal. Harold Nevers, shape shifting devil, is one of those characters so richly crafted that he can make us forget we're reading fiction. German's carefully researched and enticingly sensory descriptions of Depression-era Louisiana create the same suspension of disbelief. This novel's title bespeaks the legacies of deception and the timelessness of desperate people.