Southern Man : A Novel

Greg Iles is one of Americas great storytellers. Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author

The hugely anticipated new Penn Cage novel from the #1New York Timesbestselling author of the Natchez Burningtrilogy andCemetery Road, about a manand a townrocked by anarchy and tragedy, but unbowed in the fight to save those they love

Fifteen years after the events of theNatchez Burningtrilogy, Penn Cage is alone. Nearly all his loved ones are dead, his old allies gone, and he carries a mortal secret that separates him from the world. But Penns exile comes to an end when a brawl at a Mississippi rap festival triggers a bloody mass shootingone that nearly takes the life of his daughter Annie.

As the stunned cities of Natchez and Bienville reel, antebellum plantation homes continue to burn and the deadly attacks are claimed by a Black radical group as historic acts of justice. Panic sweeps through the tourist communities, driving theminexorably toward a race war.

But what might have been only a regional sideshow of the 2024 Presidential election explodes into national prominence, thanks to the stunning ascent of Robert E. Lee White, a Southern war hero who seizes the public imagination as a third-party candidate. Dubbed the Tik-Tok Man, and funded by an eccentric Mississippi billionaire, Bobby White rides the glory of his Special Forces record to an unprecedented run at the White Houseone unseen since the campaign of H. Ross Perot.

To triumph over the national party machines, Bobby evolves a plan of unimaginable daring. One fateful autumn weekend, with White set to declare his candidacy in all fifty states, the forces polarizing America line up against one another: Black vs. white, states vs. the federal government, democracy vs. Fascism. Teaming with his fearless daughter (now a civil rights lawyer) and a former Black Panther who spent most of his life in Parchman Prison, Penn tears into Bobby Whites pursuit of the Presidency and ultimately risks a second Civil War to try to expose its motivation to the world, before the America of our Constitution slides into the abyss.

InSouthern Man, Greg Iles returns to the riveting style and historic depth that made the Natchez Burning trilogy a searing masterpiece and hurls the narrative fifteen years forward into our current momentwhere America itself teeters on the brink of anarchy.