Set in the American South in the years before and during the Civil War, John Wray’s hypnotic new novel is at once a crime story, a bravura work of historical fiction, and a fire-and-brimstone meditation on American credulity and corruption. Thaddeus Morelle’s followers call him “the Redeemer.” Over the years he has led the Island 37 Gang from stealing horses to stealing slaves in an enterprise so nefarious that both the Union and Confederacy have placed a bounty on their heads. But now Morelle is dead, murdered by his puppet and protégé, Virgil Ball, who may rid himself of the Redeemer but can never be free of his Trade. Based on the true story of John Murrell, a figure once as infamous as Jesse James, Canaan’s Tongue is suspenseful and fiercely comic, a modern masterpiece of the American grotesque.

Religious poetry is the holy of holies of literature. In all ages poets have been the interpreters of the finer feelings of humanity, and the greatest have treated the loftiest themes that can employ the mind and the heart -- the relation of man to his Maker, and the duties and privileges which arise from it. It has been the aim of the editors to make the present collection truly catholic. It embraces a body of representative poems of all ages, denominations, and countries. The authors are allowed the fullest liberty of uttering their sentiments in their own words. - Preface.