New Bites: Bootlicker by Steve Piacente

Bootlicker by Steve Piacente is a crime novel that begins life at the end of the 1950's in America.



An unholy union exists between a racist U.S. senator and the candidate poised to become South Carolina’s first black congressman since the Civil War.

The year is 1959, the setting, rural South Carolina. Poor, black teenager Ike Washington stumbles on a Klan lynching led by a white judge. Caught, he must choose: join the dead man or begin hustling black support the ambitious judge needs to advance. In trade, Ike is handed a life of comfort and power. Decades later, as he is poised to become the first black SC congressman since Reconstruction, guilt-wracked Ike winds up alone in the same forest, a long rope in his fist. Rookie reporter Dan Patragno uncovers the truth just before Election Day.