Ivory Tower

Professor Margolis Santos, the protagonist of this intriguing, smoothly written first novel from scholar Jenkins (Poetic Obligation: Ethics in Experimental American Poetry After 1945), teaches cinema studies at Athens University. Located in the Deep South, the university is proud of its football team and demands that it win at all costs. That Margolis’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, Frank, coaches the team has put increasing pressure on their deteriorating relationship. Meanwhile, Margolis faces possible dismissal because of an affair with a student from a local junior college. As she digs in to fight to save her job, she stumbles on a much larger and more insidious network of corruption and vice. Margolis becomes the target of a powerful group of ruthless men who will stop at nothing to maintain their position. The linear narration slips easily into and out of a cinematic script version of the action and enlightening excerpts from Margolis’s lectures on film structure. These tricks enhance the characterization and plot as well as lend a pleasing rhythm to the book. Jenkins has made an impressive start as a novelist. (Self-published)