"Swallow Savannah" may be confined to a "Southern crossroads caught in the undertow of time," but for Burger, a longtime sports writer for The Post and Courier, it meant total control at the reins, and all the hours he needed to bring it home.

City Paper sat down with Burger recently to talk about the novel, the Citadel, newspapers, and why he's not really a sports fan.

"I was doing this first novel to kind of get it out of my system, to see if I could do it. And I found that I really enjoyed the process," he says. "In journalism, we have space and time restrictions. But in writing a novel, you can turn the faucets on and just let it go. No speed limits, no stop signs, nothing between you and where you want to go with the words."

"Swallow Savannah," the inaugural release of Evening Post Ventures' new book publishing division (with Joggling Board Press), pivots on the character of Frank Finklea, a former Oklahoma oil field worker who comes to South Carolina in the 1950s with an opportunist's instincts and a coal black heart. In Bluff County, where there was talk that the federal government was building the world's biggest atomic bomb factory, Finklea would find his angle, one that would propel him out of the muck and into corridors of power. Just the sort of power that could be abused with impunity.

As Finklea erects an empire, others falter in his wake: a trusting father-in-law, his brutalized wife, a troubled mistress and a kindly son whose soul resembles his father's not at all. But a man's sins can track his steps. In time, years of exploitation, racial tension and government corruption will come to a boil.

Born and raised in Allendale, Burger grew up in the shadow of the controversial Savannah River Site, a nuclear materials processing center on land in Aiken, Allendale and Barnwell counties adjacent to the Savannah River. While his book is limned with reality, it remains a work of fiction. To what extent events are actual and the characters manifestations of real people is known only to the author.

"We called Allendale 'downwind, downstream' from the bomb plant. It's the culture I grew up in during the '50s and '60s, a time of racial unrest, the Cold War. The bomb plant was the big, secret place where everybody's daddy worked. I used that culture and that time to create this story. When people finish reading the book, they will probably have the question in their minds, 'Did this really happen?' The answer is, 'It coulda.' Everything was ripe for it to happen. And it did happen in certain instances in other parts of the country."

But to be believable, Finklea could not be a cardboard cutout who twirled his mustache. He had to be humanized. Still, Burger, who jocularly terms his novel "my 300-page column," was surprised that the character ushered him down paths he hadn't anticipated.

"Some of the characters are more evil than I imagined I could write. Finklea is human. He's also an SOB. He's trying to get by like everyone else. And this is the way he does it."

The bones of the book took shape almost 10 years ago, says Burger, whose career has included stints covering business and politics, not least two years as the newspaper's Washington correspondent.

"Every sports writer probably has a novel in the drawer. Mine stayed there until (EPV division chief) John Burbage came to me and asked if I'd pull it out and do it. And I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, this being my first shot.

"The thing about writing is that I've figured out I'm pretty good at it, but I never look under the hood to see how it works. I write by sound; words are like music. It's about rhythm, and the perfect word in the perfect place. I don't analyze it. But you have to be fearless. I love writing, the physical part of writing. This was the same kind of attitude. You just go at it and write like crazy."