The Plunder Room: September 2007

The Greenville Journal, Sept. 7, 2007

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Here's what critics said when THE PLUNDER ROOM came out

“THE PLUNDER ROOM’S characters are vivid and believable,” the San Antonio Express-News writes, “while the sense of setting and place are beautifully rendered and true to the modern-day South. Any Deep South venue is refreshing, particularly when guided by an author with John Jeter’s skills.” Asheville’s Mountain Xpress calls the book a “character-driven literary work, a return to the age of story telling in the vein of fellow Southerner Walker Percy.” Acclaimed North Carolina author Ron Rash says the book is “an impressive debut” See more self-important chest-thumping in older links and blogposts further down.

The Synopsis

A timely Southern allegory that taps into the national zeitgeist, THE PLUNDER ROOM follows four generations of a quirky family into the heart of American honor - or what's left of it. Randol Duncan, a slacker blueblood paraplegic, no sooner buries his war-hero grandfather than he realizes he must salvage that proud legacy ... before a lurid scandal may destroy them all. Faced with the mandate his colorful grandfather had left him - along with a key to the Plunder Room, upstairs in the family's antebellum home - Randol, the sometimes snarky, sometimes poignant, some-time music critic, soon discovers just how far off the cliff the family had fallen from the Greatest Generation to Generation X ... the secret that lies in THE PLUNDER ROOM.

The Nice Things They're Saying

"The past is not dead; it’s not even past," William Faulkner tells us, and such is the case in John Jeter’s impressive debut, where both past and present make their demands on one man’s life. — Ron Rash, author of Serena With the Duncans, John Jeter debuts a tangled and heartstrung family of Southern soldiers, ill-equipped to carry their legacy of honor above all else much past the front porch of the family estate. From the point of view of Randol’s wheelchair, it’s awfully funny to watch them try. Sardonic and sly, embroidered with all the pageantry of the grand old South and the neon of the new, The Plunder Room is a swaggering tour through what it means to be a Southern man in this day and age. - Ashley Warlick, Houghton Mifflin Literary Award winner, author of Seek the Living, The Summer After June and The Distance from the Heart of Things John Jeter reels us in with his needle-sharp wit and his jump-off-the-page characters … one of the most satisfying Southern yarns I’ve read in years. - Karin Gillespie, co-author, The Sweet Potato Queens 1st Big-Ass Novel, and Dollar Daze John Jeter combines family, fighting, history and honor in a story of four generations of a Southern family, told with both humor and deep-South detail. You'll enjoy the visit. - Cathy Pickens, author of Hush My Mouth

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