Katherine Clark – författare

A political satire that reimagines George Wallace''s last run for governor of Alabama

It''s the summer of George Wallace''s last run for governor of Alabama in 1982, and the state is at a crossroads. In Katherine Clark''s All the Governor''s Men, a political comedy of manners that reimagines Wallace''s last campaign, voters face a clear choice between the infamous segregationist, now a crippled old man in a wheelchair, and his primary opponent, Aaron Osgood, a progressive young candidate poised to liberate the state from its George Wallace-poisoned past.

Daniel Dobbs, a twenty one-year-old Harvard graduate and South Alabama native, is one of many young people who have joined the campaign representing hope and change for a downtrodden Alabama. A political animal himself, Daniel possesses so much charm and charisma that he was nicknamed "the Governor" in college. Nowhe is engaged in the struggle to conquer once and for all the malignant man Alabamians have traditionally called "the Governor."

This historic election isn''t the only thing Daniel wants to win. During his senior year, he fell in love with a freshman girl from Mountain Brook, the "Tiny Kingdom" of wealth and privilege, a world apart from his own Alabama origins. A small-town country boy, Daniel desperately wants to gain the favor of his girlfriend''s family along with her mentor, the larger-than-life English teacher Norman Laney. Daniel also wants to keep one or two ex-girlfriends firmly out of the picture. In the course of his summer, he must untangle his complicated personal life, satisfy the middle-class dreams of his parents for their Harvard-educated son, decide whether to enter law school or launch his own political career, and, incidentally, help his candidate defeat George Wallace, in a close and increasingly dirty race.

All the Governor''s Men is a darkly comic look at both the political process in general and a significant political chapter in Alabama history. This second novel in Katherine Clark''s Mountain Brook series depicts the social and political landscape of an Alabama world that is at once a place like no other and at the same time, a place like all others.

A high-society Southern satire about an heir''s battle with his domineering mother, society''s expectations, and his own mental health

The Ex-Suicide, Katherine Clark''s fourth Mountain Brook novel, is a satirical comedy of manners about a prominent Alabama family living across the street from the Birmingham Country Club. The house happens to be where the writer Walker Percy lived as a child with his family until his father committed suicide in the attic with a shotgun. The only son of the current residents, Hamilton "Ham" Whitmire has several Ivy League degrees as well as a generous trust fund but is striving mainly to be an "ex-suicide," as defined by Percy''s writings. As a result of Ham''s intellectual aspirations and philosophical principles, and thanks to his trust fund, he has succeeded only in figuring out what he does not want to do with his life. Unfortunately this comprises just about all known occupations, but especially any involving the family business, which his imperious, society-matron mother insists he take over from his aging father.

When the novel opens, the thirty-seven-year-old son has recently returned to his hometown and taken a teaching position at a historically black college in the "other" Birmingham—not the one where he grew up. As an anxiety-ridden, panic-attack-prone depressive in a perpetual state of existential crisis, Ham must plan carefully how to get through each day without putting his life in the hands of the mental-health-care professionals. But, according to his mother, he must also take over the reins of the family business, get married, and carry on the family name.

Ham isn''t in Birmingham long before he learns his college is also in an existential crisis and fighting to keep its doors open. Even worse, circumstances force him to take at least an interest in the family business. While seeking refuge and stability in the waiting room of his therapist''s office, he finds himself in the emotional thrall of a beautiful old flame who is in the midst of a devastating divorce. She is anxious to have Ham back in her life, at least as an escort, but probably more.

Will Ham buckle under all the pressures—as Percy''s father famously did in the attic of what is now his parents'' home? Or will he be able to pull himself together and live up to society''s (and his mother''s) expectations? Fortunately Ham is one of Norman Laney''s former pupils, and Laney never gives up on a student. In the midst of Ham''s crisis, Laney steps into the breach in hopes that Ham chooses life as an ex-suicide.