The Honor Killing Of David L. Branton A Novel - Couverture souple

Branton, Jonathan

Couverture souple

ISBN 13 : 9798410646710

Editeur : Independently published, 2022

Synopsis

Honor Killings typically happen in the Middle East - not Allentown PA. In Kuwait honor killing is a misdemeanor not a major crime. Gay men are thrown off of building tops; unfaithful wives are stoned to death for the perceived damage they do to the family honor. In The Honor Killing of David L. Branton, however, author Jonathan Branton tells the story of his older brother David who disappeared 30 years ago. What if, the author asks, an honor killing happened in Allentown - a small, fading former industrial town on Pennsylvania's eastern border - to a locally august family full of doctors, lawyers, pilots and country club members? Branton posits that though his brother was president of his high school class and a practicing attorney, his cocaine addiction, homosexuality, and HIV diagnosis drove his family to kill him to protect their name.

It's hard to believe that three years have gone by since I finished writing this book. Given that people are still buying and reviewing it, I guess I must have hit a nerve - especially in my hometown of Allentown, PA where the book is set. It's been truly edifying to read positive, interesting commentary by perfect strangers who picked up the book on a whim and were blown away by it. One of my favorite comments still is one of the earliest. It was from an Allentown cop who told me over the phone that he "couldn't put the book down even in the middle of a double murder investigation!" It doesn't get any better than that. Further, there are locals who are familiar with the story or my family who give the book a fair shake and come away unnerved by it. On the contrary, there are those who write nasty, demented, undocumented things - I call it revenge of the philistines - who simply want to adversely impact book sales or those who claim to have known me or lived in the proximity of me when I was 7, let's say, and claim to "know" the deep, dark reason I wrote this book based on some psychobabble they picked up in Parade Magazine in 1975 (right below the heart-to-heart with Toni Tennille). Let me be clear: my brother David didn't disappear because of some personal failing of mine. He disappeared, I contend, because my family wanted him gone.

To try to get my own head around those extreme homophobic impulses, I set about writing a new book - a prequel to Honor Killing - last year. I had hoped to be done with the project by this Christmas season. Alas, a large portion of it is done, but not the whole thing. What I discovered in the planning and plotting of the new book was that it would be best told in two books . Book one is now done except for some editing and glamming up a bit. Book 2 will most likely be done by this time next year – just in time for the Christmas book buying season! Book one is told from my perspective as a 10-year-old child allowing visual stimuli from before my birth to create a narrative that I didn’t live through, but that I eagerly report on for the reader. Book one is entirely set in the 1950s and paints an intriguing picture of my family – especially the disturbed daddy character from Honor killing – and the go-go Lehigh Valley of that era: The striving and successes of the many and the excruciating loss of so much that was good, but that modernity and suspicion about the other caused to wither on the vine. Book 2, moves forward in time from my perspective as a 10 year-old to its logical end in today’s time. Look for this new two book set to be available Christmas 2026. Contact me at whydetroit8@aol.com and I'll reserve you a copy.

Merry Christmas,

Jonathan Branton
Detroit
December 2025

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Independently published
• Date d'édition: 2022
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 13: 9798410646710
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 91
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg