Böcker av Lance Levens

Charles Cash is addicted to the mayo-drips and brown buns of a Big Mac, so he undergoes a colonoscopy. Under anesthesia he dreams about his advanced high school history class (three African American super stars) and the sometimes-salacious diary they're reading from the Civil War. The diary concerns Charles's own ancestors, specifically the picaresque adventures of Cato Cincinnatus Cash ("CC"), med school failure and dope addict, and his paramour, Lulu Hartmann, German bi-sexual chanteuse. Charles's three students fall in love with CC and Lulu and their troupe, including Little Bug, a black boy about eleven who carries a frog leg around his neck that from time to time, turns into a wise counselor who keeps the little man from getting depressed. Isabell Feinberg, school art teacher and Charles's fiancé, points out that his students love him, but he has only shown them white people in the war. What they really want is to learn about slavery. What was it like? How did the slaves survive?Charles, a white man, is convinced even he can't teach them that...until he is himself transformed in his dream into a black slave and is hauled away to a rice plantation on the Pedee River to serve as a secretary for a masked, brutal plantation owner. Little Bug and Mr. Jam save him and bring him back to his classroom where his three black students are ecstatic. In his dream CC and Lulu are married and Charles and Isabelle are married. During Charles's ceremony, a trumpet sounds. The walls of the chapel fall away, and from all over the south, graves open and the dead of both north and south rise. They're grinning and they all march forward toward Charles. He's stunned and relieved and a burden is lifted from his heart.When Charles wakes up from his colonoscopy, (which took 30 minutes), he proposes to the real Isabelle and tells her he has been granted a vision. He's a lackluster Episcopalian, who doesn't normally believe in visions, but this one he believes. He is free from the Civil War, his ancestor CC, and his parents. He proposes marriage. The end.

Steal Away, my 70,000-wd. Christian/magical realism novel, takes place in early nineteenth century Middle Georgia when teaching slaves to read the Bible was against the law. Jacob Wells, a twenty-year-old slave, knows how to read and wants to free the souls of his people, even if their bodies are trapped in chattel bondage.The novel opens with the death of his mentor, Mr. Alan Cudjoe, a free black, murdered for doing what Jacob aspires to. Beside Sarah, his sweetheart, his only friend is Legs, a comedic dwarf born with his feet attached to his torso. Jacob plants scriptures and warrior angels spring up who help Jacob in his battle.When he's eventually caught teaching, Jacob's master, the benevolent and literary Mr. Gus McBride, refuses to flog him, but his fellow planters force Mr. Gus to do it. After his recovery from the beating, disenchanted and depressed, Jacob meets an alluring white girl and succumbs to lust, betraying Sarah. With time, he realizes how wicked he's become and enters into a season of penitence. He starves himself.Dying from hunger and haunted by hellish visions, he's rescued by a she-goat whose milk-bursting udder saves his life. In the shop where he works, seven Haitian warriors appear, soliciting Jacob's help to murder the landowners. He and Sarah write a note to Mr. Gus warning him of the Haitian plan, but it's intercepted by Mrs. McBride, who's convinced Jacob has an evil spirit and believes he wants to kill Mr. Gus. The Haitians butcher only one family. The sheriff catches and locks the murderers in a barn and burns them alive inside, but the landowners learn the Haitians met with Jacob before the attack and accuse him of collusion. The sheriff arrests him.Legs and Sarah and Mr. Gus try to stop the mob at the jailhouse, but they're over-powered and Jacob is hung. A warrior angel saves his spirit. After Jacob's death, Mr. Gus erects The Jacob Wells School for slaves. Sarah will be its first teacher and Mr. Gus will offer instruction in poetry, his first love.