The New Inheritors

The third novel in Kent Wascom’s quartet set in the Gulf Coast, The New Inheritors is a breathtaking examination of family, environment, and the insidious costs of money. In 1914, with the world on the brink of war, Isaac Patterson, a nature-loving young artist, meets Kemper Woolsack, an heiress caught in the rivalry between her brothers. Kemper’s older brother Angel is hiding a terrible secret about his sexuality, and her younger brother Red possesses a capacity for violence that frightens even the members of his own ruthless family. Together, Isaac and Kemper build a refuge on their beloved, wild, Gulf Coast. But their paradise is short lived: as the coast is rocked by the storms of summer, the country falls into a martial fever as Europe moves towards war, and the Woolsack family’s rivalries come to a bloody head—threatening to tear Kemper and Isaac apart forever.

Kent Wascom’s first novel, The Blood of Heaven, was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post and NPR. It was shortlisted for the David J. Langum Sr. Prize for Historical Fiction and longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan Award for First Fiction. Wascom was awarded the 2012 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for Fiction. He lives in Louisiana.