Product Description
Harry McChesney is seven when he first learns of Buddy his only brother who’d died young and left his family in misery. After a fitful start on his own life Harry decides that the only way to get things right for himself and his family is to become The Replacement Son.
Author W.S. Culpepper frames Harry’s psychological drama within an epic adventure story. Harry struggles to define himself rescue his family from the emotional aftermath of his brother’s death and undertake a lifetime of labors as the next head of the McChesney clan. The novel tracks reluctant pilgrim Harry on his existential quest through Depression-Era New Orleans WWII and the city’s devastation following Hurricane Katrina. The Replacement Son. brings a charming but most unlikely hero and an exotic range of supporting characters to life in a compelling story of sacrifice and discovery.
About Author
W. S. Culpepper is a retired physician living in Austin TX with his wife and daughter. Prior to Hurricane Katrina he lived and worked in New Orleans LA the exotic dysfunctional much-battered but beloved city where he was born and raised.
Dr. Culpepper has written poetry since his undergraduate years at the University of Virginia where he was an Echols Scholar in English literature. After practicing and teaching pediatric cardiology for over twenty-five years he decided to focus on his writing and began exploring Japanese minimalist verse forms. His English haiku has appeared in the Tokyo Edition of the Mainichi Daily News The International Newspaper of Japan beginning in 2001. As a member of the Haiku Society of America he produced a collection of less traditional Zen verse entitled Haiku Lite:Poems for the New Millennium. His prose works include a travel memoir France 2007: A Journal and a collection of essays on growing up in post-WW II New Orleans Tales of Yute. The Replacement Son is his first novel.