by Alec Clayton – The pirate Pegleg Josiah Johnson was said to have fathered children with women in every major city along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the most famous of which was New Orleans madame Matilda Gertrude Hildegarde Duchamp who went by Gertie.
The Descendants of the Pirate Pegleg Josiah Johnson traces the lives of Pegleg and Gertie’s many descendants, beginning with their grandson Hairless Harlan Johnson, whose wife was mauled by a tiger.
After migrating from the swamplands of South Louisiana to Seattle and Olympia, Washington, Harlan’s many children and grandchildren get together every summer at a resort on Orcas Island where all hell breaks loose as brothers and sisters learn anew how to love one another despite it all.
Get to know the crazy Johnson family from Hairless Harlan to Billy, the oldest who has never fit in, to Lizzy the dancer, to Larry the New York citified artist whom everyone loves; to sensible Eva and her wife Helen; and to Bryce the football player and history professor who tried to eat a hat.
The Descendants of the Pirate Pegleg Josiah Johnson is fiction as true to life as it is absurd, as realistic as it is comical.
REVIEWS
Generations . . . spanning two centuries, from opposite extremes of the nation, … sibling rivalries, evolving marital relationships, a range of sexualities, aging, infectious diseases … there is a lot going on in this story. – Don Martin
This is the sort of book that makes one long to break down and utter those terrible cliches, “larger than life,” “rollicking,” “a boisterous family saga.”
It is not larger than life, but exactly the size of life, and that’s what makes it good. This is perhaps Clayton’s most ambitious book.
Billy is an unreconstructed Trump-lover, but he holds somehow to his stature and his dignity. I am not only moved by the way Clayton allows the characters to be touched by the books, the thoughts, the movements of their own generations, but believe them. Through it all, there is a sense of family that holds them together. – Jack Butler
Publication year: 2025
Trade paper, 352 pages, 6″ x 9″
$18.00 ISBN-13: 978-0-9800322-3-9
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The Descendants of the Pirate Pegleg Josiah Johnson
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