# A Savage Wisdom: Kindle BOOK OF THE DAY



## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

*A Savage Wisdom*, an "imaginative reconstruction" of the life of Toni Jo Henry, the only woman executed in Louisiana's electric chair, has four times reached #5 in the competitive Kindle category of *Murder & Mayhem*.

Toni Jo was 24 when she committed the murder and only 26 when she was executed in a portable electric chair nicknamed "Little Sizzler," which made the rounds once a year in Louisiana.

Norman German


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

*A Savage Wisdom*, an "imaginative reconstruction" of the life of Toni Jo Henry, the only woman executed in Louisiana's electric chair, has reached #5 in the competitive Kindle category of *Murder & Mayhem*.

For the next week, the blogsite "I Just Finished: the conversation of books" is hosting a Q&A session about the novel. Please drop in and ask questions by clicking on http://www.ijustfinished.com/index.php?

Thanks!

Norman German


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

An imaginative reconstruction of the life of the only woman executed in Louisiana's electric chair, *A Savage Wisdom* has reached #5 in the Kindle category of *Murder & Mayhem*.

In "Rewriting the Past for More Compelling Fiction," I discuss my research and post-modern decision to alter the facts of Toni Jo Henry's life in order to create a fictional study in deception and personality formation.

For the full article in *Writers in the Sky*, click http://writersinthesky.com/ezine/news-dec09.html

Many thanks to those who have pushed *Savage *  to such a high rank in a category that includes *Columbine * and several Ann Rule novels.

Norman German


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

On December 12, I was the guest writer on the Writers in the Sky blog site: http://yvonneperry.blogspot.com/

In "Rewriting the Past for More Compelling Fiction," I discussed the research methods I used to inject a "textured" historical realism into *A Savage Wisdom*.

Norman German


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

When I graduated with an M.A. in English from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979, I never thought I'd be the subject of an "alumnus" article.

For the interview about my writing *A Savage Wisdom*, click

http://www.utexas.edu/opa/blogs/shelflife/2009/11/18/ut-alumnus-inspired-by-true-crimes-of-first-woman-executed-in-louisiana-for-his-latest-book/

Norman German


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

BookZillion has posted an excerpt of *A Savage Wisdom* that is not available on Amazon.com:

http://www.bookzillion.com/books/detail/a-savage-wisdom

The excerpted section is a description of the antagonist's symbolic dragon tattoo and Toni Jo Henry's foreshadowing reaction to it.

Norman German


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

February 14th  will be the 71st anniversary of Toni Jo Henry's murder of Houston businessman J. P. Calloway. For the truly cold-hearted killing, Toni Jo paid the supreme price of her life and became the first and still only woman executed in Louisiana's electric chair.

*A Savage Wisdom* has reached #5 four times in the competitive category of Murder & Mayhem.

*A Savage Wisdom* IS a novel. It is fiction in the vein of Truman Capote's _In Cold Blood_, which started the genre of *faction * (fiction based on fact). I change enough of the actual story of Toni Jo Henry that the novel would be classified as "alternative history," an intriguing genre that starts with the premise, "What if...."

I think of the novel as a study in deception  and personality transformation. If you're interested in why good people sometimes do bad things, this will be a great read for you.

Norman German


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

_A Savage Wisdom_, based on the life of Toni Jo Henry, the only woman executed in Louisiana's electric chair, is now on Amazon in paperback.

The Kindle version has reached #5 four times in the competitive "Murder & Mayhem" category.

http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Wisdom-Norman-German/dp/096545696X/ref=sr_1_1_oe_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1273470554&sr=1-1

Norman German


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

*A Savage Wisdom* is an imaginative reconstruction of the life of Toni Jo Henry, the only woman executed in Louisiana's electric chair, for a 1940 Valentine's Day murder.

I alter several facts from Toni Jo's life to pose the question, "What would cause a truly innocent woman to ruthlessly kill a seemingly kind man?"

These kinds of fictional variations (for example, a novel positing what would have happened if Lee Harvey Oswald had missed his fatal shot of John F. Kennedy) have been called "alternative history" and "faction," fiction based on fact.

*A Savage Wisdom* will be the Kindle "Book of the Day" this Thursday, March 10. Get ahead of the curve and discover why this startling novel has reached #5 four times in the competitive category of "Murder & Mayhem."

http://www.amazon.com/A-Savage-Wisdom-ebook/dp/B0028AD3C2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269274057&sr=8-1


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Welcome to KindleBoards, Norman, and congratulations on your book! I've merged your latest post with your existing thread for the book. 

(If you've gotten this welcome before, it's just as a matter of housekeeping. We like to put a copy of the "welcome letter" in each book thread. It doesn't mean you've done anything wrong, it just helps us know that you know the rules.)

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## KBoards Admin (Nov 27, 2007)

I'm pleased to welcome A Savage Wisdom as our KB Book of the Day!


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## MissRead (Mar 10, 2011)

Great title! How did you come up with it?


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

During the four years it took to research and write *A Savage Wisdom*, I had the "working title" _Zero at the Bone_ in my head.

That's the last line of a poem about a snake by Emily Dickinson, and I thought her description of the chill from suddenly seeing a snake at your feet fit the feeling I was trying to achieve in my antagonist Harold Nevers. He is a chameleon character, constantly changing, so that even the protagonist, Toni Jo Henry, never really knows who he is, or even what name he is currently using.

Unfortunately, I discovered that not fewer than 17 books had the same title, so I simply took a phrase from the last page of the novel and used it. Fortunately, it has worked out even better than the original title.

Thanks, MissRead!


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## MissRead (Mar 10, 2011)

"A Savage Wisdom" (LOVE that title) is set in Louisiana and about a Louisiana murderess, yet I heard there was a Texas connection...what's that all about? I'm looking forward to reading it this weekend. Thanks for taking the time to answer!


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

Regarding the Texas connection:

Toni Jo's birth name is Annie Beatrice McQuiston (misspelled on her tombstone as "Anna"). In Shreveport, as a teenage prostitute going by the name Toni Jo, she fell for Claude "Cowboy" Henry, an ex-prize fighter. In 1939, he isolated her in a hotel room and forced her to go "cold turkey" from her drug addiction. They secured a marriage license in Lake Charles and married in Sulphur.

Cowboy's arrest for murdering San Antonio policeman Arthur Sinclair (before meeting Toni Jo) cut their honeymoon short. In January 1940, Cowboy was sentenced to fifty years in the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville.

For more on the Texas connection, click the following link, which includes the article "Texas Completes the Circuit to Louisiana's Electric Chair," which I wrote during a "Virtual [online] Book Tour" last year.

http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

Several people have asked about Harold Nevers' tattoos. The angel tattoo on his chest represents the good front he presents to the world.

The dragon on his back symbolizes his dark side. He's a chameleon character, or Satanic shape-shifter, constantly changing in order to be what others want him to be. His exotic dragon tattoo is described with exotic words. If the reader doesn't know some of the words, that only enhances his exotic out-of-reach appeal:

From the doorway, Annie discerned the unmistakable colors of a tattoo on Harold's back. She moved out of the frame to let the light reach across the room. Her throat constricted as it did when she was frightened or saw something very beautiful.
It was a dragon. Of some sort. More beautiful and dangerous than any creature she had ever seen. A hybrid of sphinx and basilisk, of hippogriff and gargoyle and manticore, it was evil in design yet somehow holy in effect, a beast selected from the draconian population slurking in a guttered Chinaman's opium induced nightmare. Rising out of a sulfurous fog, it was covered with diamond shaped scales of green and blue. The monster's incandescent white eyes were embossed with black pupils; its mouth vomited red and yellow flames. At significant jointures, the skeletal structure of its batlike wings protruded daggerstyle-living icicles dripping with the gore of its latest victim. The quartz shards of its stegosaurean spine tapered into a segmented scorpion tail that serpentined down to the hills of his buttocks where it disappeared into the subterranean aperture of its cave home. Every aspect of the illuminated dragon seemed to possess hieroglyphic meaning, as if the tattoo were a medieval manuscript indited by a slavering but skillful madman.
Mesmerized by the horror and beauty of the thing, Annie reached out to touch it.


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## MissRead (Mar 10, 2011)

Off-topic, but can you share what books have been life-changing for you?


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

No single book has had a radical effect on me. Rather, a lifetime of reading has shaped my thinking and actions.

Among the most influential, I would name Thoreau's *Walden*, the poetry of Robert Frost and Dylan Thomas, the short stories of Ray Carver and Flannery O'Connor, Ralph Ellison's *Invisible Man*, Faulkner's *As I Lay Dying*, James Dickey's aggressive style in *Deliverance * and his poetry, and Wendell Berry's prose, poetry, and philosophy. And, of course, no American can escape the Bible as a powerful influence. Weirdly, believe it or not, Benjamin Franklin's almanac and autobiography have had quite an impact on my development as a person and on my discipline as a writer.

Also, a number of more wide-ranging books have been enlightening: Desmond Morris's *The Naked Ape*, Janson's *History of Art*, *The Hite Report*, Carl Sagan's *Broca's Brain* and *The Dragon's of Eden*, and biographies of Freud and Jung. Also, scads  of vocabulary and etymology books influenced my writing of *The Word on Words: The Play of Language*, due out as a Kindle book by April 2011.


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## bookclubmom (Mar 11, 2011)

I was impressed by the detailed historical background. How did you recreate that time period since you obviously didn't live during those times? I'm reading "No Other World" now and enjoying it. Again, I'm impressed with the historical background...it all really comes alive for me.


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## Norman German (Jul 26, 2009)

Toni Jo's story has intrigued me since childhood, when I would read about her in the Lake Charles _American Press_, which tantalized readers with reproductions of her leggy portrait as a coddled death-row inmate.

When I decided to "novelize" her life, my four-year research led me to the newspaper archive room and Toni Jo's tombstone, which has her first named (Annie) misspelled as Anna.

Then I read dozens of newspaper articles on the murder, capture, trial, and execution. To create the dense, "textured" world of a novel, I immersed myself in magazines and popular histories of the time-frame of the novel: from World War I to 1963 (JFK's assassination).

From antique stores, I bought ten copies of magazines from the period, including _Life_, _Look_, _Collier's_, and _Saturday Evening Post_. I read every article and studied every ad in order to realistically recreate the clothing, slang, and pop-culture icons of the era.

One indispensable history was Frederick Lewis Allen's *Since Yesterday: The 1930s* in America. However, my most valuable source was *New Orleans in the Thirties*, by lay historian Mary Lou Widmer. It includes hundreds of photographs chronicling the interior décor, men's and women's clothing styles, cuisine, and social customs of the time.

For the 1950s, I became familiar with everything from automobile models and colors to whiskey brands in legendary journalist David Halberstam's *The Fifties*, as well as in *Time * magazine's special issue "Time Capsule: 1950, The Year in Review."

With this information saturating my consciousness, I began "texturing" the novel with the facts and ambience of the period.


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## KBoards Admin (Nov 27, 2007)

Welcome to A Savage Wisdom as our KB Book of the Day!


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## KBoards Admin (Nov 27, 2007)

Welcome to A Savage Wisdom as our KB Book of the Day!


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