Eddie's Bastard

One of the most enchanting début American novels in recent years.

'A book written with such elegance, maturity and humour it is difficult to believe that the author is only 28 years old'

'Clever, emotional storytelling with laughs, tears, and love'

William Kowalski is the author of EDDIE'S BASTARD, winner of South Africa's Exclusive Books Ama-Boeke Prize; SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF HERE, THE ADVENTURES OF FLASH JACKSON and THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR, all published by Black Swan. Born in Ohio and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania, he now lives in Nova Scotia, Canada with his wife and two daughters.

Eddie's Bastard spins the warm, endearing tale of William Amos Mann IV and of the inhabitants of his eponymous small upstate New York town, Mannville. 
 
Related in flashback by the adult Billy, the story begins with him being deposited as an infant on the doorstep of his grandfather's home in a simple wicker basket with a plain two-word message pinned to his shawl reading 'Eddie's Bastard'. Eddie had been killed in Vietnam three months earlier - his father, Thomas Mann Jnr, had given up on life, having lost his only son and, he thought, his only heir. But now, suddenly, Thomas has a grandson and an heir - if not to the once-vast Mann fortune (for Thomas had recklessly squandered that in a foolhardy enterprise just after his heroic return from WWII), then at least to the long legacy of the Mann family stories, stretching back to the Civil War. 
 
Eddie's Bastard is filled with episodes of madcap adventure and resonates with the power of lifelong friendship. By turns hilarious, thrilling and heart-breaking, here is a début that stays in the mind long after the reading is over.

William Kowalski

With his widely acclaimed debut, 28-year-old William Kowalski emerged as one of the most exciting and distinctive new American writers in years. In his hew book, Kowalski once again proves himself an extraordinarily gifted writer as he follows his hero Billy Mann on his search for the mother who deserted him as a baby. Now 20 years old, Billy travels atop his beloved motorcycle to the last known address he has for her ot a side street named Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is a journey that will teach him many things about family, friends, love - and death. 
 
Filled with wondrous imagery and lyricism, Somewhere South of Here has a lightness of touch that belies how very much it has to say about life's greatest themes of all.

William Kowalski

Books by William Kowalski

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