Hallelujah, Alabama! by Robert Ely

Hallelujah, Alabama!

Category: Fiction

Format: Trade Cloth, 284 pages

Pub Date: December 2006

Price: $27.95

ISBN: 978-0-9785311-3-3 (0-9785311-3-2)

• surcharge may apply for orders outside the continental United States

ABOUT THE BOOK
Meet Richard Steick, PhD, Esquire, professor of literature and attorney-at-law in Hallelujah, Alabama, a good man who wants to do good despite feeling a bit unsteady in his own moral universe. When he discovers that a wealthy corporation has made billions over the decades off mineral rights rightfully belonging to the descendants of a group of ex-slaves—one of whom is his own former client Ninety McWilliams—the gentlemanly barrister takes tooled leather briefcase in hand and mounts the judicial ramparts. His plan will have the side benefit of stopping a scheme to store nuclear waste in a remote Alabama county. Steick’s manuevering brings him into an unusual alliance with a powerful black legislator and up against moralizing Governor Sid Scroulous and assorted state bureaucrats. Along the way, he discovers the true meaning of love and happiness. Hallelujah, Alabama! is a wickedly funny and wise satire of contemporary Southern politics and culture.

PRAISE
“That smarty-pants, Robert Ely, has written the first great Alabama novel of the twenty-first century. He pokes fun at every manner of human folly, including his own—and yours and mine. The book is laugh-out-loud funny. Yet, beneath the fun lies a forgiving acceptance of the human condition just as it is. Never mind how bizarrely we and his state may, on occasion, behave—or misbehave.” — Judith Paterson, author of Sweet Mystery: A Book of Remembering

“Robert Ely’s Hallelujah, Alabama! is a hoot.” — Ferrol Sams, author of Run With the Horsemen and The Widow’s Mite

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Ely is an associate professor of English and Humanities at Alabama State University and an attorney in private practice in Montgomery. He has also taught at Purdue University, Auburn University, Troy University, and Auburn University Montgomery, and lectured at Selcuk University in Konya, Turkey. A former journalist, he is an essayist, textbook author, and the author of two volumes of poetry, Mose T’s Slapout Family Album and Encanchata. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Mobil Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation.

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