The Kingdoms of Savannah: A Novel

by George Dawes Green

Pub Date – 7/19/22

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This book was so fascinating. An indepth dive into Savannahs sordid history. The amount of white and male washed history out there is like 85%. But the stories are out there just not always being told to entertain the tourists.

This family was very dysfunctional with very interesting relationships that were controlling. One of them lived in the homeless encampments to stay away from his rich controlling southern mama. This i think was an important viewpoint. In humanizing the homeless experience. It’s an epidemic in this country and although there are resources not everyone wants to be in society. Some are by choice, lack of money or employment, drugs or alcohol, untreated mental health issues, the list goes on. Society isn’t a one size fits all box and it always reminds me of the factionless in Divergent. You don’t fit in you get pushed out.

I really enjoyed this one! The mystery was there and poor Stoney. There were a few suspects that could’ve been it. It wasn’t exactly who I thought it was but you know it all boils down to money and land.

There was history in this that was under the fictional story and the Gothic and lovely mossy trees of Savannah came through.

Thank you Celadon books for the gifted copy.

Description

Savannah may appear to be “some town out of a fable,” with its vine flowers, turreted mansions, and ghost tours that romanticize the city’s history. But look deeper and you’ll uncover secrets, past and present, that tell a more sinister tale. It’s the story at the heart of George Dawes Green’s chilling new novel, The Kingdoms of Savannah.

It begins quietly on a balmy Southern night as some locals gather at Bo Peep’s, one of the town’s favorite watering holes. Within an hour, however, a man will be murdered and his companion will be “disappeared.” An unlikely detective, Morgana Musgrove, doyenne of Savannah society, is called upon to unravel the mystery of these crimes. Morgana is an imperious, demanding, and conniving woman, whose four grown children are weary of her schemes. But one by one she inveigles them into helping with her investigation, and soon the family uncovers some terrifying truths—truths that will rock Savannah’s power structure to its core.

Moving from the homeless encampments that ring the city to the stately homes of Savannah’s elite, Green’s novel brilliantly depicts the underbelly of a city with a dark history and the strangely mesmerizing dysfunction of a complex family.