White Knight Re-issued for the 40th Anniversary of Jonestown

White Knight or how one man came to believe that he was the one who caused the San Francisco City Hall killings and the Jonestown Massacre — A novel by Henry Hitz

In 1977, a fireman named Dan White saved a woman and her babies from a fire in the Geneva Towers apartments in San Francisco. It is this scene which opens White Knight, the story of one witness to that fire, Barney Blatz, and his entanglement with the political and personal catastrophe which followed. With the November, 1978 Jonestown Massacre of 912 people and, nine days later, White’s murder of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the city and Barney unraveled. “There’s a bumper sticker that reads ‘Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once,’ but this November, it isn’t working.”

A powerful tale set in San Francisco during the turbulent late ‘70s. Hitz makes you feel that you were there, and shows how we came to grasp that ‘the personal is political’ and, alas, vice versa. An elegant debut novel.

-Clifford Irving, author of Final Argument and The Autobiography of Howard Hughes

Interweaving San Francisco’s twin civic traumas – the massacre at Jonestown and the murders of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk – with the tumultuous inner life of protagonist Barney Blatz, White Knight captures the frenetic scene of late 70’s San Francisco. This fast-paced novel melds the revolutionary zeal of political activism with personal turmoil that both feeds it and results from it. A great read!

-Ruhama Veltfort, author of The Promised Land and Strange Attractors

Barney has only the best intentions.  A community organizer and pre-school teacher, he just wants to save the world, starting with the children (and the women) in a dilapidated housing project on the outskirts of San Francisco.  But in this engaging tale of internal and external implosion, the best intentions of many decent people are destined to go awry.  Beyond well researched, this is the story of someone who was there and has the scars to prove it.

-Mark Lapin, author of Pledge of Allegiance

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