Fresh off his appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America as the February Book Club selection, Brendan Slocumb recently returned to his childhood home of rural North Carolina to discuss his debut novel The Violin Conspiracy, which tells the story of Ray McMillian, who is determined to become a world-class professional violinist. When his great-great-grandfather’s priceless

Dear Reader, This story is fiction. But it also tells the truth. All stories start with a seed and for me that seed was planted years ago when I first crossed paths with Lord Byron’s epic poem, The Giaour, along with his deeply ingrained Orientalism and sexism. In college, I took a class that centered around