George and Rue

The facts are clear. It was, by all accounts, a slug-ugly crime. In 1949, George and Rufus Hamilton bludgeoned a taxi driver to death with a hammer in the dirt-poor settlement of Barker's Point, New Brunswick. Less than eight months later, the brothers were hanged for their crime. George and Rue's brutal act lives on in New Brunswick over half a century later, where the murder site is still known as Hammertown. George Elliott Clark draws from this disturbing chapter in Canadian history in his first novel, brilliantly reimagining the lives - and deaths - of the two brothers. Fiercely human and startlingly poignant, George & Rue sifts seamlessly through the killers' pasts, examining just what kind of forces would reduce these men to lives of crime, violence, and ultimately, murder. In this richly evocative and bleakly comic tale, we also come to know the story of an impoverished Africadian community, powerless to help its people, and of a white community bent on viewing all blacks as dangerous outsiders. Infused with the sensual, rhythmic beauty that is the hallmark of George Elliott Clarke's writing, George & Rue is an unforgettable fiction debut.