The Virginia Bookshelf ia a series of paperback reprints of classic works focusing on Virginia life, landscapes, and people.

"The Shad Treatment is a cranky, imperfect and highly readable study of Virginia politics and politicians.... (Protagonist) Mac (Evans) will inevitably remind you of Walker Percy's Binx Bolling and Robert Penn Warren's Jack Burden in his bright humor and dark burrowings into the past, his party-line relativism, his wry malaise, his self-irony and his nondespairing awareness of the absurd.... Savor this decent book". — New York Times Book Review

"It may seem unlikely that a work of fiction could give a better sense of Virginia and its nuanced politics than almost any nonfiction book around, but The Shad Treatment does that and much more. In a wild and woolly trip through an almost-real campaign for governor, Garrett Epps has vividly captured the Old Dominion and has defined the 'New Dominion' that reformers have tried to create for generations". — Larry J. Sabato, Author of Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics

An All the King's Men for Virginia, The Shad Treatment vividly chronicles politics during the Byrd regime's decline in the 1970s. Fiery populist Thomas Jefferson "Tom Jeff" Shadwell is leading a "people's crusade" to liberate the Virginia Governor's Mansion from the grip of the conservative political machine that has controlled the state for fifty years. Against him are ranged the powerful forces that have kept the state back for so long — unreconstructed race-baiting politicians, gentleman farmers, giant corporations, and the "best families". The campaign promises to be the toughest, dirtiest, and most brutal indecades.

But for Mac Evans. key aide in the Shadwell campaign, the election means something else: one last chance for his family to gain vindication and respect after years of defeat and ridicule. His father was a fighting liberal driven into exile by slander. His brother Lester met with a tragic end in his cautious quest for power. Mac himself seeks that one final opportunity to redeem his name and self-respect.

Inspired by events and personalities from the heated 1973 Virginia gubernatorial election, The Shad Treatment takes readers into the smoky convention halls, drab motel rooms, and shabby campaign offices where political kingmakers decide the fate of candidates and the people they seek to represent.

The Shad Treatment vividly chronicles politics during the Byrd regime's decline in the 1970s. Fiery populist Thomas Jefferson "Tom Jeff" Shadwell is leading a "people's crusade" to liberate the Virginia Governor's Mansion from the grip of the conservative political machine that has controlled the state for fifty years. Against him are ranged the powerful forces that have kept the state back for so long - unreconstructed race-baiting politicians, gentleman farmers, giant corporations, and the "best families". The campaign promises to be the toughest, dirtiest, and most brutal in decades.