Blood on the Roses
Inthe autumn of 1955, at the height of America’s concern over themurder of a black teenager by white racists in Mississippi and in thewake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation,Rachel Feigen’s Baltimore editor sends her South to report on amissing person case. Guy Saillot’s last contact with his family wasa postcard from the Tennessee Bend Motel, a seedy establishmentsituated on scenic Cherokee Lake. She gets a tip that George, thedeaf-mute motel caretaker, may know something about the missing man.George’s consuming interest is the Tennessee Bend’s arrestingrose garden—its only truly positive quality—and she gains hisfavor by admiring his beautiful roses.
Feigensoon finds herself caught up in the bigotry she expected to observeas an outsider when three local extremists decide to teach a lessonto this “uppity jewgirl” from the North who’s asking too manyquestions. They kidnap two black men and lock them and Feigen in Room10 of the Tennessee Bend, complete with its two-way mirror voyeur’swindow, confident the men’s “jungle instincts” will take overand she’ll get her comeuppance. But the two men taken at gunpoint,an Army sergeant just back from Korea and an Urban League attorneyfrom Philadelphia, don’t play the game the way their captorsexpect.
Appallingas it is, her own maltreatment is a mere sidebar to Feigen’smission: finding Guy Saillot. George’s rose garden holds the keythat unlocks the shocking secret and reveals the malevolent extremesto which unfettered intolerance can lead.
Inhis fourth and finest novel, Robert Hays writes with the journalist’scareful attention to detail and an exquisite authenticity drawn fromhis own half-century love affair with the American South. Bloodon the Roses is a frank and honeststory that does justice to its splendid east Tennessee setting,stunning from beginning to end in its juxtaposition of rawugliness and beauty and itshistorical veracity that captures both the engaging qualities of theSouthern people and the terrible wrongs of discrimination andoutrageous acts of pure racism carried out by a few.
