River Runs Red

The christening of the world’s first skyscraper on the shores of the mighty Mississippi River is the backdrop for River Runs Red, Lambda Literary Award finalist Scott Alexander Hess' new novel set in St. Louis, Missouri circa 1891.

Calhoun McBride and Clement Cartwright are men from different worlds. Young Calhoun works backbreaking, midnight shifts at the Snopes Brewery...and earns a little extra selling his body to eager men. Clement left St. Louis to pursue his architectural ambitions and returns to great fanfare as the man planning the city's first skyscraper. But one steamy night, by the Mississippi River, both men find themselves drawn to one another. But what chance has brought together, the machinations of a bitter and cruel man, Belasco Snopes, who thinks St. Louis belongs to him…down to its people, victims for all his appetites, will tear apart. Hess’s new historical novel offers readers a sultry story with menace.

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New Edition coming August 9, 2022 from Rebel Satori Press

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REVIEWS:

“Hess (Skyscraper, 2016, etc.) returns with a dark thriller set in late 19th-century St. Louis… lyrical, gritty read with a compelling young protagonist.” Kirkus Reviews
“Triumph…Set in the summer of 1891, this captivating novel, complete with tasteful homoerotic themes, is immersive and tactile. The sweat lingers from the stifling heat, you smell the lush gardens and you feel the mud of the Mississippi between your toes.” - Chris Andoe, Riverfront Times
“River Runs Red is a cunning mix of lyricism and grit. A triumphant and beautifully-written historical novel.” Joe Okonkwo, Jazz Moon
“Hess has written another gritty, steamy (in all senses of the word), and atmospheric historical novel. He travels effortlessly from high society parlors to the shacks of the river drabs..It may be a short novel, but it packs a punch, like a river rat boxer. And like the Mississippi, the short chapters of River Runs Red lap at your ankles, but before you know it, the riptide of the story has drawn you in, and then there’s no way to resist the current of this narrative.” Out In Print
“The opening scene of Scott Alexander Hess’s new novel, River Runs Red, is equally powerful and uncomfortable: Orphan-turned-derelict Calhoun McBride, living in 1891 St. Louis, turns tricks on the banks of the Mississippi River, the fictitious Snopes Brewery standing in the distance. Soon, he’ll meet Clement Cartwright, the ambitious architect who designed a skyscraper—the world’s first—called the Landsworth Building. Their introduction will set off a scandal in St. Louis that culminates in a court trial in the book’s final chapters.” - St. Louis Magazine
"Through lush, lyrical prose and intricate storytelling, Hess examines the emotional intensity at the heart of the human condition. Writing authentic dialects that reflect a richly textured time and place, Hess crafts the unique voices of four distinct characters, whose ambitions, terrors, and illicit desires clash dramatically on the banks of the Mississippi that contains all their secrets." - Amy Dupcak, author of Dust