Tess Nottebohm writes in her non-fiction account of the financial industry, “The Banking/Wall Street Beast Unleashed, has crushed the middle-class that it needs to feed upon; bringing to mind a serpent, greedily and mindlessly, swallowing its own tail.” Bold words, based on Nottebohm’s five-year battle with three of the most powerful financial entities in America.
San Rafael, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 07/03/2014 -- Though she prefers drama be confined to the pages of her novels, in real life Tess Nottebohm does battle with the many-headed beast—the mortgage industry, Wall Street, the judicial system, our government itself--that she believes ravaged our country’s economy, not to mention world-wide ill-effects. Having lost everything she and her artist husband had in The Great Recession of 2008, along with myriad American families, Nottebohm decided to embark on the daunting task of fighting back. Though for every head lobbed off the beast, two seem to grow in its place.
With the release of her novel, Sultry Days of Blood and Angels, occurring in the midst of seemingly never-ending turmoil, Nottebohm was too overwhelmed to promote the work that has been amazingly well-received by its impassioned readers. Her fan-mail includes claims that Sultry Days profoundly inspired personal change; that it has been read four times by one avid fan, while another reread it immediately upon reaching its last page; many saying it is among their favorite books of all time; the only complaint being sorrow that it had to end. Though set in the past, its timeless story touches the hearts and minds of contemporary readers.
“The American Dream of home ownership is a fundamental one, beginning with the mass immigration to this country in the 1800s; of those fleeing a continent where land ownership was only possible for the rich and powerful“ says the author, who is currently at work on her second novel and an expose of her crusade against the American banking system. “Through my pursuit and joy of home ownership, I was caught in the web of ‘predatory’ loans being made in 2007, which led to an ongoing battle with two major banks and a mega mortgage servicer. To say the least, my eyes were opened to the vast corruption going on in our banking industry.”
Official Synopsis:
Disillusioned with the lack of passion and enchantment in the modern world, Annette Emery stumbles onto the ornate city of New Orleans. Under its powerful seduction, and through an encounter with a book merchant, she follows clues that lead to an abandoned cabin in the bayou, where she finds the journal of a fabled recluse: Wellsworth Worthington. Written in 1903, the complex story that unfolds brings Annette to her own surprising connection to its notorious characters.
Through Wellsworth’s bewitched account of the past, two free-spirited young women emerge: Divinity, daughter of slave and master, and Priscilla, of the tormented Lefeuvre family. Healers and scholars, or witches and whores—according to various rumors—their antics are spied upon by Wellsworth, who makes himself their devoted houseman after finding Divinity naked and unconscious in the bayou. He resides at their mansion, Chez Mystiphi, until its temptations become his undoing.
Part mystery, part adult fairy tale, Sultry Days of Blood and Angels is an intricately woven, offbeat story of obsession, betrayal and murder, that touches on Vampire lore, Voodoo and Slavery; raising questions about what it means to be truly free. One may well be seduced by this book’s sultry, subversive heart, and swept away by its poetic eroticism, into an exploration of what we have unwittingly lost, and what we might choose to reclaim, from our past. But most of all, it is a dream of the future.
‘Sultry Days of Blood and Angels’ has won acclaim from critics and readers alike.
"For those of us who never quite grasped the tragic depth of Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 inundation of New Orleans, Tess Nottebohm’s new novel, Sultry Days of Blood and Angels, is a prose poem reminding us how fragile, beautiful, tragic, erotic and utterly sui generis was and is the Crescent City,” writes Richard Rapaport, author, journalist, and visiting Scholar University of California Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. “Sultry Days is confected from the bitter-sweet urban archeology of a place that for three-hundred years has lived a few frightening meters of water away from extinction and lived, therefore, that much closer to the edge. It is that rich boundary teeming with life, sex, voodoo and death and the inescapable tie to Creole customs and cuisine that is an irreducible part of the richness of 19th Century New Orleans so convincingly captured and elegantly served up in Tess Nottebohm’s Sultry Days of Blood and Angels.”
Stephanie JT Russell, author of ‘One Flash of Lightning: A Samurai Path for Living the Moment’, was equally as impressed, writing: “Sultry Days of Blood and Angels is a lush journey into history, identity, and passion. The threadbare pages of an old man's antique journal burst with a Pandora's Box of deep-bayou intrigue—spurring a modern young adventuress to seek her own destiny through the journal's account of three wildly compelling female characters.”
‘Sultry Days of Blood and Angels’ is available now: http://amzn.to/1irLYUB
About Tess Nottebohm
Tess Nottebohm, a visual artist for most of her life, has set aside brushes to paint with words in this, her first novel. She lives in Northern California with her husband, artist Andreas Nottebohm. Set in an historically rich, diverse culture--where French and Spanish settlers, African slaves, black priestesses, quadroons, duchesses and scoundrels abound--this novel renders them all captives of that legendary Grande Dame: New Orleans, herself.