author of Nick and The Fighter Michael Farris Smith
Oleander City is a surreal blend of the real and the imagined, where broken lives traverse the ravaged landscapes of hurt and loss. Matt Bondurant depicts characters who carry the great weight of tragedy, and he reminds us that where there is heavy burden, there is also the strength to bear it.”
author of Play Pretty Blues and American Pop Snowden Wright
In Oleander City, Matt Bondurant takes the carbon of history and, with the pressure and heat of beautifully crafted prose, sensitively drawn characters, and a gut-wrenching, heart-wrenching narrative, creates a brilliant diamond of a novel. Bondurant hurls readers through the Galveston hurricane of 1900, past figures as legendary as Jack Johnson and Clara Barton, into collision with the Ku Klux Klan, and straight toward the dark, murky truth of the American Dream. Oleander City, like all diamonds, is a gift to last forever.”
author of Shifty’s Boys Chris Offutt
Set against the sweeping backdrop of dramatic action…this book will keep you reading into the night.”
Book Junkie Reviews
Oleander City is a well-written, fascinating historical fiction.”
national bestselling author of Girl Talk and Pure Julianna Baggott
In Oleander City, Bondurant reminds us of the horrors of our humanity but amid it all, that there are those who fight for goodness, for love and truth, that we are brutal but also beautiful brutes. This is a brilliant novel.”
New York Times bestselling author of My Sunshine A M. O. Walsh
Bondurant’s Oleander City is the best kind of historical novel. Richly imagined, exquisitely written, this tale of disaster and perseverance is both visceral and urgent. The intertwined tales of Galveston mud and spilled blood, like the dizzying combinations of the book’s bare-fisted boxers, make this novel a knockout.”
Clay Reynolds
From the catastrophic chaos and horror of the worst natural disaster in US history, Matt Bondurant extracts three very human stories of individuals who found themselves caught up in the aftermath of unimaginable tragedy. His portraits of these three disparate souls dramatize the valuable poignancy of tenderness cast against the necessary toughness of dedication, the sweetness of dreams, and the unwavering commitment to purpose, to life. This novel surprises with its perceptiveness and astonishes with its poignant illustration of the deeper and more sustaining values of beauty and truth and love.”
New York Times bestselling author Wiley Cash
In Oleander City, Matt Bondurant braids the events of the worst natural disaster in American history with one of the great untold stories of American culture. Only a writer of Bondurant’s skill could achieve such complicated braiding. This is history written like a novel, a complicated legacy of human tragedy, race, and class distilled into one hell of a read.”
Adam Johnson
With austere prose, compelling characters, and a gripping true story, Oleander City bears down on its characters like a category five storm, forcing three lost souls to discover who they truly are. More timely than one would think, this tale of natural catastrophe, racial injustice, and lawlessness ultimately illuminates the humanity that motivates and unites us all. A certifiable page-turner, Oleander City pulls at you with the dark undertow of an America that isn’t quite bygone.”
Booklist
Bondurant weaves together fascinating backstories with vivid descriptions of the storm and its aftermath, showing that it takes many types of courage to fight for what is right.”
author of Dual Citizens and We Want What We Want Alix Ohlin
Matt Bondurant’s latest work of historical fiction is a deftly woven tale of humanity amidst tragedy. Its vivid characters traverse the broken landscape of hurricane-ravaged Galveston, their lives intersecting in surprising and complicated ways. I won’t forget any of them—especially Hester, a stoic orphan girl accompanied by an old hound dog. It’s a gripping story told with lush and immersive detail.”
Historical Novels Review
This novel will appeal to readers wanting to learn about the greatest Jewish boxer of all time (Choynski), young Jack Johnson, the selfless Red Cross of an earlier time, and the carnage wrought by Galveston’s hurricane.”
San Francisco Book Review
Perhaps best known for his unflinching nonfiction, Matt Bondurant’s latest novel, Oleander City, capitalizes on the same strengths to weave a fictional account of one of the most horrific natural disasters in American history…Compelling…Oleander City is a well-executed take on one of the most fatal days of the last century.”
Library Journal
★ 10/14/2022
Bondurant bases his novel on the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history—the category-four hurricane that destroyed Galveston Island, TX, in September 1900. An intense story using vivid scenes of survivors battling thousands of corpses and the stench of death, it evolves through three points of view: Hester, a fictional six-year-old orphan who survives the storm; Diana, the Red Cross's fictional right-hand woman to Clara Barton; and the real-life Jewish boxer, Joe Choynski, who comes to the island for an exhibition fight against local Black boxer, Jack Johnson, to raise funds for relief efforts. We see the images of destruction through the eyes of Hester—bodies hanging from trees, body parts jutting from the sand; the magnitude of the Red Cross's mission embodied by Diana, wading through mud and human remains to help the homeless and injured; and Chrysanthemum Joe's fight for racial justice, using his boxing skills to demand human dignity. When the Ku Klux Klan attempt to rid the island of "undesirables," the fight for survival becomes even more urgent. VERDICT Bondurant masterfully entwines haunting imagery, humanity at its best and worst, and factual historical events into an examination of racism, sexism, and white privilege that is just as relevant today as it was in 1900.—K.L. Romo
