The Dark Water Gospel: An East Tennessee Anthology - Paperback

by Douglas Stuart McDaniel (Author)

Set in East Tennessee, The Dark Water Gospel examines how civic power operates in small communities through omission, loyalty, and managed memory. Drawing on archives, court records, and lived accounts, the stories trace how decisions are made without minutes, how accountability is deferred, and how public language absorbs private misconduct. Like the work of Flannery O'Connor and James Baldwin, the book is less concerned with exposure than with process-how patterns of harm are reframed as isolated incidents, and how communities learn to live with what they refuse to name. The result is a civic record rather than an indictment, attentive to how power survives by appearing ordinary.