In the small town of Braddox, southwest of Chicago, Rose sets this drama of satanic horror. At first the surface of things seems perfectly normal, but soon crueler levels are exposed, and the mythic contest between a precocious young boy and an aging god recapitulates a universal journey through human loss toward redemption.??"A peripatetic Spirit of Darkness enters a Midwestern Anytown, takes a death hold on an already strange Jewish boy and his parents, transfigures certain townsfolk into witches, touches half the world, heaven and hell, and is battled in lonely desperation by the possessed: this is the perplexing, disturbing tour de force by a novelist of formidable talent, who handles narrative, imagery, characterization, and symbolism like a sorcerer of words himself . . . His world is reminiscent of those of Augie March, Rosemary's Baby, and The Magus, but it is genuine uncharted territory." - Wilson Library Bulletin

Since the publication of his groundbreaking books Writing Without Teachers and Writing with Power, Peter Elbow has revolutionized how people think about writing. Now, in Vernacular Eloquence, he makes a vital new contribution to both practice and theory. The core idea is simple: we can enlist virtues from the language activity most people find easiest-speaking-for the language activity most people find hardest-writing. Speech, with its spontaneity, naturalness of expression, and fluidity of thought, has many overlooked linguistic and rhetorical merits. Through several easy to employ techniques, writers can marshal this "wisdom of the tongue" to produce stronger, clearer, more natural writing.This simple idea, it turns out, has deep repercussions. Our culture of literacy, Elbow argues, functions as though it were a plot against the spoken voice, the human body, vernacular language, and those without privilege-making it harder than necessary to write with comfort or power. Giving speech a central role in writing overturns many empty preconceptions. It causes readers to think critically about the relationship between speech, writing, and our notion of literacy. Developing the political implications behind Elbow's previous books, Vernacular Eloquence makes a compelling case that strengthening writing and democratizing it go hand in hand.

Usurpers of the throne of Wessex feared neither fury from Heaven nor the justice of men. When no avenging angel descended from the firmament or hero arose from amongst the citizenry to confront the growing labyrinth of despair, the very earth of Englands ancient graves rent open and issued forth a ghostly champion of their own. Without mercy or compassion, its spectral hooves clattered through the cobbled Gates of Death that flanked the blazing backdrop of Hell and galloped through the blackened night to ruthlessly confront the Kings intolerable inhumanity. As it had since time immemorial, Britains otherworldly sentinel let slip an unbridled rage mere men could never hope to dampen a savage, barbaric indignation that relentlessly trampled brutish humanity beneath its chiselled, avenging hooves.