Slave masters were people, too. From recent texts and films we have learned that slavery was a bad thing. Colonel Hap Thompson was simply a man about his business. His business was training other people.

"This is truly the most terrifying book I’ve read this year. The training manual imitates the teachings of a slave master, one Colonel Hap Thompson, who, for the sake of rearing good slaves, gives methodical/technical lessons in their handling — yes, “handling” is a term used for training animals. What’s most chilling is the academic presentation, as if in good faith, teaching dehumanizing, the lowest form of human conduct. This account, were it presented any other way, would be intolerable. But Everett strikes a resonant chord by using the elevated and refined language of an educated “trainer.” The power is in actual reckonings — brute force so that individuals become subhuman; and if they do not comply, subjecting them to dehumanization again and again. It’s torture dignified by logic, philosophical beliefs, and white man’s rhetoric."—Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books Interview in The Rumpus featuring Douglas Manuel Featured in The New York Times

"It's not surprising that So Much Blue is such a perfectly structured novel; Everett is an author who started his career off strong and just keeps getting better. It's a generous, thrilling book by a man who might well be America's most under-recognized literary master, and readers will be thinking about it long after the last page. As Kevin observes at one point: 'Like most things that come back to haunt you, it haunted me in the beginning. No ghost is born overnight.'"—Michael Shaub, NPR Book Review