This fictionalized account of their relationship and the story of two Southern backwoods residents who each became one of the biggest writers of their time - and stopped speaking to each other - makes for an engrossing, fantastic blend of strong characterization and gripping plot. Any who would categorize this as simply quasi-biography, fiction or ghost story will find its power and enchantment simply undeniable: an outstanding recommendation for general lending collections strong in fictionalized facts.

“Powers’ approach is a fascinating one…Capote in Kansas will be a fine ghost story of the read-by-the-fire-on-a-cold-night type. Powers casts the book as a novel, not a memoir, and this is precisely what gives it its power.”—Infodad.com

“Powers manipulates the novel into a fascinating combination of fact and fiction to deliver a powerful portrait of two of America’s literary icons…[A] riveting and haunting examination of two extraordinary lives.” The Advocate, Pegram, TN  

Powers inserts this entertaining and imaginative story into the realities of Capote’s and Lee’s lives; as Powers writes in the Author’s Note: “A surprising amount of the book is based on real events.” He captures Capote’s beloved cattiness and Lee’s legendary loner status, fashioning fully-realized characters that engage the reader by coming alive on the page. Fans of Capote and Lee will learn some interesting facts about their lives and the inspirations behind their greatest works. However, this is fiction: Though Powers uses the real lives of Capote and Lee to frame his narrative, the essence of the book is more ghost story than literal history. The events—including the hauntings and the slapstick hijinks of Truman and Myrtle—are occasionally farfetched, but Powers clearly respects his subjects and never resorts to easy jokes at the expense of characterization. Every action is embedded and supported by the narrative. Capote in Kansas allows readers one last adventure with the creator of Boo Radley and one last waltz around the Black and White Ball with Truman and his caustic wit.

http://www.hipsterbookclub.com/reviews/copy/0108/capote_in_kansas_kim_powers.html

Truman Capote in his waning days is plagued with nightmares - menacing appearances of the victims and killers from his fomenting real life pulseracer In Cold Blood — and those nocturnal visions drive him back to the cast-off confidante and dear friend Harper Lee, who lived through and abetted the reportage for the Breakfast at Tiffany’s author’s most serious work. In this novel, which is told in terror-dumps and flashbacks, the complexities and complications of friendship, the exhumation of the facts and the conflicting loyalties that come into play inform the most compelling aspects of this novel grounded in what really happened.
     For Lee, who was about to emerge on the American literary horizon as the creator of the race/justice/yourh classic To Kill A Mockingbird, it’s a shuddering remembrance of her friendship long worn down to nothing. Sanity, gothic Southernism, indulgence and vanity be damned, the intersection of these elements, two great literary works, two deeply singular voices are a fertile field for Emmy-winning writer Kim Powers to flex his use of small detail, large betrayal and economy of language to evoke a story that’ll hold you, inform you and ignite your own imaginative reflexes. This is an elevated escape with perfect binding.

Capote in Kansas is a richly detailed story that incorporates so much fact into the telling it acquires the harsh light and intimate detail of documentary…..The characters, including Nelle’s sister Alice and Truman’s maid Myrtle and his last boyfriend Danny, are so real that they almost speak from the pages they appear in. The ancillary details, including events from the shared past of Capote and Lee and the separate adult histories of each of them, give fascinating glimpses into their private lives and into the backgrounds of their famous novels.

Haunted authors cling in decline

by Jim Provenzano

Capote in Kansas: a Ghost Story by Kim Powers; Carroll & Graf, $25.

A number of prerequisite readings will make Kim Powers’ novel Capote in Kansas even more enjoyable than it is, and it is…. touching and often hilarious…. Powers, whose own life became the subject of his first book, a memoir (The History of Swimming), weaves a deft and clever rewriting of what is known and fabricated about these two mysterious authors, both of whom became national celebrities in the 1950s, but both of whom failed to continue their success. In a way, Powers enacts a sort of revenge on Capote, who was known to change details of In Cold Blood to satisfy his own writing. Perhaps the Clutters are satisfied. Living readers will be satisfied as well.

“…well-written and at times intriguing…. ”Capote in Kansas” raises thought-provoking philosophical issues about how writers should use the lives of real people.” 

When the ghosts of the Clutter family from In Cold Blood literally come calling, a near-death Truman Capote reaches out to estranged writer pal Nelle Harper Lee for help in Capote in Kansas.

Vérité Moment
At one point, Kim Powers plausibly implies that Capote himself started the rumors that he was the real author of Lee’s venerable To Kill a Mockingbird.

Lowdown
Powers astutely summons the intense sorrow behind a life-long friendship gone awry.

Library Journal, 10/15/2007 (starred review)In his exceptional first novel, Emmy and Peabody Award winner Powers presents us with Truman Capote in the last year of his life. Addled by drugs and alcohol and despairing the wreck his shining life has become, he is plagued by the ghosts of the people whose deaths he chronicled in his greatest book, In Cold Blood. The now-old Harper Lee, or Nelle as she calls herself, is the only one who has a shot at understanding Truman—his childhood friend, she served as companion and researcher on the trip to Kansas that produced In Cold Blood. But Nelle has her own ghosts to exorcise having to do with why she never wrote a second book. In Kansas, Powers speculates, Truman exposed Nelle to her own sexuality, which she continues to suppress. And at his famous 1966 Black and White Ball, green with envy over Nelle’s having won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Truman spreads the rumor that it was he who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, not she. Powers, whose 2006 memoir, The History of Swimming, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, succeeds brilliantly in blending fact and fiction to produce a sensitive portrait of two lost souls. Heartily recommended for public collections.—David Keymer, Modesto, CA