About the Author:
Charles B. Fancher is the author of Red Clay, the popular historical novel from Blackstone Publishing. The novel, which covers the final months of the Civil War, Reconstruction and the early years of Jim Crow in the American South, is the latest turn in a wide-ranging career that spans journalism, public relations, and academia.
As a journalist, Fancher worked for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he was an editor on the Foreign and News desks, and, as a reporter, he wrote features and covered higher education. He also worked for the Detroit Free Press, where he held a variety of positions, including Editor of Detroit Free Press Magazine, the newspaper’s Sunday magazine. His time at the Free Press, also included stints as a member of the Editorial Board, as the Deputy Business Editor, and as the Assistant to the Executive Editor. He began his journalism career as a broadcast reporter in Nashville, Tennessee for the local NBC-TV affiliate, WSM-TV (now WSMV-TV).
Fancher moved back and forth between journalism and public relations over the course of his career. As a corporate communications executive, he served as Vice President, Communications for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington, D.C. and as Vice President/Communications and Public Affairs for Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Knight-Ridder, Inc., then-publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. He also directed the company’s philanthropic activities.
His public relations work also included operating a consultancy, Annapolis, Maryland-based Fancher Associates, which provided writing, editing, research and communications planning services to corporate and non-profit clients. His early public relations work included working as a publicist for the ABC Television Network in New York, assigned to programs produced by ABC Entertainment, ABC Sports and ABC News. He was also the Publicity Manager for the Opryland complex in Nashville, Tennessee.
In academia, Fancher was a Lecturer in the School of Communications at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he served as Coordinator of the Strategic Communications sequence in the Department of Strategic, Legal and Management Communication and as interim Assistant Chair of the Department of Journalism. He has also been a member of the adjunct faculty of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He is a graduate of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Journalists at the University of Michigan (now known as the Knight-Wallace Fellowships). He lives with his wife, former journalist Diane Brozek Fancher, in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains.
About Charles’ book Red Clay:
An astounding multigenerational saga, Red Clay chronicles the interwoven lives of an enslaved Black family and their white owners as the Civil War ends and Reconstruction begins.
In 1943, when a frail old white woman shows up in Red Clay, Alabama, at the home of a Black former slave—on the morning following his funeral—his family hardly knows what to expect after she utters the words “… a lifetime ago, my family owned yours.” Adelaide Parker has a story to tell—one of ambition, betrayal, violence, and redemption—that shaped both the fate of her family and that of the late Felix H. Parker.
But there are gaps in her knowledge, and she’s come to Red Clay seeking answers from a family with whom she shares a name and a history that neither knows in full. In an epic saga that takes us from Red Clay to Paris, to the Côte d’Azur and New Orleans, human frailties are pushed to their limits as secrets are exposed and the line between good and evil becomes ever more difficult to discern. Red Clay is a tale that deftly lays bare the ugliness of slavery, the uncertainty of the final months of the Civil War, the optimism of Reconstruction, and the pain and frustration of Jim Crow.
With a vivid sense of place and a cast of memorable characters, Charles B. Fancher draws upon his own family history to weave a riveting tale of triumph over adversity, set against a backdrop of societal change and racial animus that reverberates in contemporary America. Through seasons of joy and unspeakable pain, Fancher delivers rich moments as allies become enemies, and enemies—to their great surprise—find new respect for each other.
Author visits:
Book club visits with the author are available via Adventures by the Book here!