"Fleet of New Bedford" by Henry Zbyszynski

My current project is the novel Hitler's Vegetarian Cook, which is partially a comic novel and partially the opposite: an exploration of humanity's darkest side.  After spending two cheerless years in the womb, Wendy O’Hegarty discovers that her father is a Catholic priest, her mother is more interested in her beauty salon than in her, and her uncle, from Money, Mississippi, is the murderer of the 14-year-old Emmett Till.  Wendy spends her childhood attempting to find her place in the world, and her moral curiosities lead her from Massachusetts to the Mississippi Delta in 1964 just after three civil rights workers have been brutally murdered.  Here she tries to understand her uncle and this streak of familial evil.   When tragedy strikes, she is forced to come to terms not only with the person she is but with the heroine she dreams of becoming.

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