The award-winning thriller, The Cottoncrest Curse, revolves around the apparent suicide of an elderly Confederate colonel who, two decades after the end of the Civil War, viciously slit the throat of his beautiful young wife and then fatally shot himself. Sheriff Raifer Jackson, however, believes that this may be a double homicide, and suspicion falls on Jake Gold, an itinerant peddler who trades razor-sharp knives for fur and who has many deep secrets to conceal, not the least of which is that he is a Russian-Jewish immigrant in prejudiced, anti-Semitic post-Reconstruction Louisiana. Author Michael H. Rubin will discuss the historical underpinnings of The Cottoncrest Curse in a fast-paced multimedia presentation that not only illustrates the interrelationship of racism, religion, and anti-Semitism but also includes a discussion of the Jewish immigrant experience and cultural identity.
