Thanatos Syndrome is a 1987 novel by Walker Percy, set in Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. I first read it a few years after it was published, and — like Malachi Martin’s 1990 book The Keys of This Blood — I read it because my father gave me a copy. In Greek Mythology, Thanatos is the personification of death.
"Tenderness leads to the gas chamber." - That needs to be my new mantra.
More of those roots to draw from!