Word: shad
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...author Garrett Epps '72 entered college in the era of LBJ, the draft and Vietnam, and marched out at the time of Nixon, Cambodia, and Gulf in Angola, with the April 1969 bust and Kent State in between. What comes as a surprise is that the novel, The Shad Treatment, is about the mud and blood of a Virginia governor's race in the classic populist-versus-conservative mold, and that it's good...
...tread the path of reality that it becomes a roman a clef which by its publication may influence the outcome of an upcoming election. The bleeding of real campaigns and easily identifiable political figures, composing a gripping tale and simultaneously making an explicit political statement, are what set The Shad Treatment apart from most political novels and make it worth reading...
Depending on which of these two powerful characters the reader chooses to focus upon or identify with, The Shad Treatment can assume rather different kinds of significance. Evans's personal story is one with which many students--and even more of the recent alumni--can easily identify. Mac Evans, the narrator of the novel, describes in detail his disaffection with Harvard, its students, and especially its administration; he tells of being slowly but surely drawn first into sympathy with, and then active involvement in radical politics during the late '60s. He describes a famous scene outside Quincy House, when former...
Large sections of The Shad Treatment describe Evans's family, beginning with the arrival of an ancestor in 1619. Most of the narrative centers on Stephan Evans, Mac's great-great-grandfather, who built the family fortune through an early ironworks and cannon manufactury for the Civil War. The sections on Stephan Evans, his father, his brother, and his own life before the campaign are mostly good, interesting stories, filled with evocative description; when taken together they help explain Mac and his attachment to Thomas Jefferson Shadwell...
Although very well and smoothly written, The Shad Treatment does have its flaws. The long passages of description tend to become dull, as does a long excerpt from Mac's father's testimony before a Congressional committee. But it reads quickly, and to some, may make a powerful argument for staying out of politics. It does, however, make a strong case for electing Shadwell governor this year, and the publicity the novel is receiving in the Washington and Richmond press may make that possible. The real question now is whether Epps will follow The Shad Treatment with another novel...