The Southern Civic Noir Trilogy — Signed & Personalized Edition

This is the complete Southern Civic Noir series by Douglas Stuart McDaniel — Bloodwater, The Dark Water Gospel, and Defiance: A Reckoning with the Dream — signed, personalized, and shipped together in a single order directly to you.

Each set is individually addressed. Doug will handwrite your dedication, sign it, and it will be printed as the very first page of your set before it ships. The ISBN barcodes are replaced with not-for-resale codes. These copies were made for you. They cannot be purchased anywhere else. They cannot be resold.

The three books:

Bloodwater — Gulf Coast, Mississippi When two sisters inherit a bayou house marked by violence and unresolved history, they are drawn into a confrontation with a charismatic street preacher and the system that shields him. A novel about religion, incarceration, and coastal development — and how harm gets absorbed, redistributed, and rendered acceptable by communities that can't afford to acknowledge it.

The Dark Water Gospel — East Tennessee Drawing on archives, court records, and lived accounts, this anthology examines how civic power operates in small communities through omission, loyalty, and managed memory. How decisions are made without minutes. How accountability is deferred. How public language absorbs private misconduct. A civic record rather than an indictment, attentive to how power survives by appearing ordinary.

Defiance: A Reckoning with the Dream — Savannah, Georgia Set in Reconstruction-era Savannah, this novel follows Reverend James Simms — a freedman and educator who mounts a campaign to become one of Georgia's first Black state legislators. A study of how democracy is constrained in practice, and how its failures are later misremembered.

At checkout: Tell us who to address this set to. A name, a city, a line that means something. Doug will write it by hand.

Delivery: Each set is printed and shipped to order by Ingram. Please allow 7–10 business days. Ships as a single package.

This edition is limited to 1,500 sets. No second run is planned.