Charleston war correspondent turns to fiction in debutnovel, This Is How People Die

By Charleston Mercury Staff

Charleston-born journalist and war correspondent Will Cathcart has spent much of his career chasing difficult stories in some of the world’s most volatile places, from Russia’s wars in Georgia and Ukraine to the killing fields of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and the shadowlands of ISIS in the Caucasus. After writing in these pages for many years and serving as managing editor, Will Cathcart’s byline has appeared in CNN, Foreign Policy, The Daily Beast, USA Today, Garden & Gun, VICE, and other outlets; now, he is turning his attention to a different kind of battleground: the human body. His debut novel, This Is How People Die, arrives April 28 from Charleston-based Evening Post Books and is already drawing early national attention, including a spot-on Foreign Policy’s April book list of notable international releases.

The novel follows Scooter “Scoot” Jackson, a man living with cystic fibrosis, who embarks on a surreal mission to return the heart of composer Frédéric Chopin to its rightful resting place — at the request of a woman he loves. From that unlikely premise, Cathcart constructs a globe‑spanning narrative that moves from Charleston to Paris, Poland and Tbilisi, slipping between physical journey and interior odyssey. The book blends literary gravitas and dark humor with psychological insight and hints of absurdism, asking what happens when the mind wages war against a failing body, and whether it is “madness to mythologize pain, or … how we survive it.”

Cathcart has described This Is How People Die as a story about disease and the ways it strips people of agency, but also as a plea for dignity in the face of mortality. It is about survivors’ guilt and addiction, and, above all, about love — finding it, losing it, and carrying its memory forward. Life, he suggests, is “simply tragic and hilarious,” and the novel leans into that tension with sequences that read like a fever dream and an investigative dispatch all at once. Early materials from the publisher compare the book’s intellectual playfulness to Kurt Vonnegut, its lyricism to Truman Capote and its haunted moral clarity to Cormac McCarthy, positioning the work as both cerebral and deeply felt.

The author’s own biography informs the book’s preoccupation with survival. A former managing editor of the Georgian Journal, Cathcart has also served as senior advisor to a digital diplomacy task force aimed at countering Russian propaganda and worked closely with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to raise awareness and research funding. In television, he has produced or consulted for Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, National Geographic’s Drugs, Inc., and ITV’s On Assignment. He now splits his time between Charleston and Tbilisi with his family and their cat, Gocha, and currently serves as an associate editor at the South Carolina Review.

For Cathcart, early champions are critical; he has urged readers to preorder the novel, noting that advance sales shape everything from bookstore support to how far a debut can travel once it is officially in the world. U.S. readers may order directly through Evening Post Books, while international readers may find the title through major online retailers.

Charleston readers will have the chance to hear Cathcart discuss his book in person when the Charleston Library Society hosts the official launch on May 14, in an evening presented with Evening Post Books and moderated by South Carolina author and longtime educator Wesley Moore. The rescheduled event, originally planned for February, will feature a conversation about Cathcart’s transition from war zones to fiction, his creative process and what comes next, with tickets available through the Library Society’s website. Those unable to attend may still support the book locally by purchasing copies from Buxton Books.