The Gambler's Nephew

"Jack Matthews' first novel, Hanger Stout, Awake!, was published in 1967, and his latest, The Gambler's Nephew, is already the 23rd in his half-century career. Thankfully it's never too late to discover a writer this pleasant to read."--Claire Blechman, Ploughshares

"There's so much to delight a reader in local author Jack Matthews' new novel, The Gambler's Nephew, it's hard to know where to start. Probably with the prose, which Matthews writes with easy, lyrical grace and a bulls-eye wit."--Jim Phillips, The Athens News

"Jack Matthews is an American original."--William Heyen

Years ago, way back in the l850s, there was a wealthy merchant in the little Ohio River town of Brackenport by name of Nehemiah Dawes who got to brooding over slavery and grave robbing so much that his mind became unbalanced.

The Gambler's Nephew presents a world of abolitionist passion, murder, and old-fashioned cussedness, a world of steamboats plying the Ohio River, and a world with people troubled by such grand irrelevancies as love. Here is a world as richly confused as our own--and as alive as living can get.

About the Author
Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1925, Jack Matthews served in the Coast Guard at the end of World War II, then attended Ohio State University. Having taught for close to 50 years, he is now Distinguished Professor at Ohio University in Athens. His awards include the Florence Roberts Head award, Quill award, Ohio Arts Council award, and a Guggenheim grant. He is the author of more than a dozen books of fiction (novels and short stories), poetry, essays, and nonfiction, many of them set in Ohio.