New from Bellevue Literary Press: Tooth of the Covenant

Tooth of the Covenant

The eighth book of The American Novels series.

Tooth of the Convenant by Norman Lock

ISBN 9781942658832 | Bellevue Literary Press | July 6, 2021

Best known for his novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne was burdened by familial shame, which began with his great-great-grandfather John Hathorne, the infamously unrepentant Salem witch trial judge. In this, the eighth stand-alone book in The American Novels series, we witness Hawthorne writing a tale entitled Tooth of the Covenant, in which he sends his fictional surrogate, Isaac Page, back to the year 1692 to save Bridget Bishop, the first person executed for witchcraft, and rescue the other victims from execution. But when Page puts on Hathorne’s spectacles, his worldview is transformed and he loses his resolve. As he battles his conscience, he finds that it is his own life hanging in the balance.

An ingenious and profound investigation into the very notion of universal truth and morality, Tooth of the Covenant probes storytelling’s depths to raise history’s dead and assuage the persistent ghost of guilt.

 

Watch Norman Lock introduce and read from Tooth of the Covenant via Big Other.

Read an excerpt at Big Other.

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PRAISE FOR Tooth of the Covenant and The American Novels series

“The novel’s somber exploration of American cruelty and religious intolerance is balanced by its nimble prose, sly wit, and engaging glimpse of a literary figure. Lock’s latest ambitious look at America’s history will delight fans of the series and earn new converts.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Splendid. . . . Lock masters the interplay between nineteenth-century Hawthorne and his fictional surrogate, Isaac, as he travels through Puritan New England. The historical details are immersive and meticulous.”
—Foreword Reviews (starred review)

 “A distinctive and ambitious foray into literary history.”
—Kirkus

“A reflective and subtly poignant look at Nathaniel Hawthorne. . . . Lock displays a nimble virtuosity as he captures the speech of the time while demonstrating how the implicit bias, bigotry, and hypocrisy of Puritanism became the cancel culture of its day.”
—Booklist

“Despite the American Novels’ dark subject matter, their impact is exhilarating as well as scarifying…. Lock’s supple, elegantly plain-spoken prose captures the generosity of the American spirit in addition to its moral failures, and his passionate engagement with our literary heritage evinces pride in its unique character possibly equal to his chagrin over our bloodstained past.”
—Washington Post

“To say that American Follies involves Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Feast Day of the Cannibals involves Herman Melville, and The Wreckage of Eden involves Emily Dickinson makes for an accurate statement that nevertheless fails utterly to convey the unfettered imagination and narrative energy that drives each novel. In the series’ eighth novel, Tooth of the Covenant, Lock explores the weight of familial legacy, the intersection of individuals with their eras, and the power of storytelling. . . . Lock’s clever voice, shapely prose and shrewd observations help lighten the story’s mood, and the novel’s look at intolerance couldn’t be more timely.”
—Society Nineteen

“Bold and imaginative. . . . Probing into the dark corners of fear, guilt, and morality, Lock produces something unexpected.”
—Fine Books Magazine

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NORMAN LOCK has written novels, short fiction, and poetry as well as stage plays, dramas for German radio, a film for The American Film Institute, and scenarios for video-art installations. His plays have been produced in the U.S., Germany, at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, and in Turkey. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, Turkish, Polish, Greek, and Japanese.

He received the Aga Kahn Prize, given by The Paris Review, the Literary Fiction Prize, given by The Dactyl Foundation of the Arts & Humanities, fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Lock can be contacted by email at normanglock [at] gmail [dot] com and by regular mail at 33 Aberdeen Road, Apt. 355A, Tree Haven III, Aberdeen, NJ 07747-1153.