BKMT READING GUIDES
The Levee: A Novel of Baton Rouge
by Malcolm Shuman
Paperback : 211 pages
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Introduction
THE LEVEE is about how suspicion can ruin the best of friendships. When the popular young Spanish teacher at Colin Douglas' high school is found murdered near Colin's favorite camping spot on the levee, Colin is torn by suspicion and doubt. Was the killer a vagrant who just happened by the old cemetery where Senorita Gloria was found? Or was the crime committed by a lover-the father of one of Colin's friends and camping-buddies? Could it have been Toby, the boy who left camp in his car and didn't return until dawn? Or could it even have been Colin's widower father? THE LEVEE, told largely through flashbacks, evokes a period of innocence that is about to end-the late 1950s in the Deep South. It's only when Colin comes back years later that he learns the truth about the crime.
Excerpt
PROLOGUEIt was right after the execution that the dreams started. But maybe they were always there, crouching like monsters just outside the campfire circle as we huddled around the flames on those distant summer nights. I only know that for a long time I seldom let myself think about what happened over forty years ago, in May of my second high school year. I grew up, left home, settled in Colorado, where I married the love of my college years and wrote my books, and only occasionally did I let my mind wander back. When I did, I always managed to distract myself with another project. True crime was my passion, everything from the initial newspaper account to the judgment of the criminal. After my first books sold, I flattered myself that I could see inside the minds of the victim, the witnesses and, most important, the murderer. Until I met a murderer who, on the last day of his life, asked me why. ...
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Discussion Questions
1) Would young people today react the way the young characters did in the book, 50 years ago? Has there been that much change or does youth remain pretty much the same in its core values, dreams, hopes and fears?(2) Does friendship trump suspicion once the seed of suspicion is planted? Is harboring suspicion of people one cares about natural under the circumstances in the book or is it a sign of disloyalty?
Notes From the Author to the Bookclub
What made you want to write this book? I used to camp by the river just south of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, like Colin and his friends. In January, 1960, a female college professor was found bludgeoned to death in the driveway of an abandoned plantation and a Louisiana State University dean was arrested. In the days before DNA there was no “smoking gun” and the dean was released. The crime remains unsolved. The combination of adolescent awakening sexuality, Gothic overtones created by abandoned plantations along the River Road, and the memory of a very real murder inspired me, years later, to fictionalize my memories as THE LEVEE. What do you want readers to take away with them? I'd like to think I'd given the reader a few hours of pleasure by taking him or her away from everyday life and plunging them into another world. I hope that other world will resonate with worlds they knew in their youths. What else can a writer hope for? Excerpt:Book Club Recommendations
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