Scan barcode
eleellis's review against another edition
5.0
Helluva book. Why Tom Franklin is not a household name I do not know. Like William Gay, this man is sparse in his words, but his words paint an entire picture.
Of course, this book is filled with violence and hard living people, many who are not favorable at all, but his writing just flows.
Of course, this book is filled with violence and hard living people, many who are not favorable at all, but his writing just flows.
lulukubo's review against another edition
4.0
Damn, this man can write. The violence and heartbreak and poverty of body and soul made this a bit of a hard read for me, but Franklin's writing kept me going. Some of my ancestors lived in an area close to the one which is the setting of this tale, so I was very interested in the story.
amyschlott's review against another edition
3.0
This is not normally a book that I would pick to read on my own - that is what I am in a book club for I guess. The book was a good read - one that I wanted to finish, although it was a bit violent and sort of lulled in the middle.
kiwi_fruit's review against another edition
5.0
This historical novel portrays a dark and dangerous world. It is based on a true story occurred in the late 1800s, when a gang of local men calling themselves “Hell at the breach” started a campaign of terror against the town people of Grove Hill in Alabama.
A single juvenile reckless murder starts a chain of violence, its consequences are felt throughout the small community, lives will be lost, the guilty as well as the innocent.
The book exposes the basest human traits, the meanness, the pettiness, the misery, the envy, the mindless violence towards men and beast and for this reason may not be to everyone’s taste. The perpetual struggle between good and evil and the strong instinct for survival are important themes here. Where the law permits injustice, the line between right and wrong gets blurred; who do you turn to when you seek revenge, if not to your own? How easily can the actions for a just cause get out of hand?
There’s a vibrant and complex cast of characters and many, many stories to tell; the old midwife, the shop owner, the sheriff, the swindler, the peddler, the cotton sharecroppers, the young and the old, they form a cohesive picture of rural south, pulling the reader in the middle of it.
Tom Franklin writing talent is in evidence here; this is my second novel by this great storyteller and certainly won’t be my last. If you like hillbilly noir and can stand a gritty story I would highly recommend. 4.5 stars
Fav. Quote:
Waite felt a mixture of relief and worry as he picked his way through the bramble and huckleberry bushes toward the road where he could already see the movement and color of men on horseback and hear low voices and the squeak of leather and horses nickering and blowing. He was out of one fix but here was another to negotiate, this one stickier because it involved friends. At least with enemies you knew where to aim.
A single juvenile reckless murder starts a chain of violence, its consequences are felt throughout the small community, lives will be lost, the guilty as well as the innocent.
The book exposes the basest human traits, the meanness, the pettiness, the misery, the envy, the mindless violence towards men and beast and for this reason may not be to everyone’s taste. The perpetual struggle between good and evil and the strong instinct for survival are important themes here. Where the law permits injustice, the line between right and wrong gets blurred; who do you turn to when you seek revenge, if not to your own? How easily can the actions for a just cause get out of hand?
There’s a vibrant and complex cast of characters and many, many stories to tell; the old midwife, the shop owner, the sheriff, the swindler, the peddler, the cotton sharecroppers, the young and the old, they form a cohesive picture of rural south, pulling the reader in the middle of it.
Tom Franklin writing talent is in evidence here; this is my second novel by this great storyteller and certainly won’t be my last. If you like hillbilly noir and can stand a gritty story I would highly recommend. 4.5 stars
Fav. Quote:
Waite felt a mixture of relief and worry as he picked his way through the bramble and huckleberry bushes toward the road where he could already see the movement and color of men on horseback and hear low voices and the squeak of leather and horses nickering and blowing. He was out of one fix but here was another to negotiate, this one stickier because it involved friends. At least with enemies you knew where to aim.
mikedeab63's review
4.0
For me this book falls firmly into the category of: very happy to have read, but quite happy to never read again. This is a visceral, violent book that gives equal weight to both sides of the conflict and where rarely does a body appear on the page without a purpose, but it doesn't make the blood and deaths any easier to take.
Franklin doesn't shrink from presenting the dire living conditions and tenuous lifestyles of those that live on the fringes of society and he takes his time (almost the first three quarters of the book demonstrating it). It reminded me most of Woodrell's Winter's Bone in its depiction of the clannishness nature of the rural poor and McCarthy's No Country for Old Men in its lament of being unable to understand what the world was becoming.
Franklin also doesn't make any of the characters larger than life. Everyone feels very natural and the two main protagonists are chosen carefully to give the reader insight into two sides of the conflict and each character is drawn exceedingly well (though the Sheriff does seem to dissolve into drink pretty quickly).
The last one hundred pages of so falls more in line with genre conventions (and one could argue is better for it at least in terms of narrative push) in setting up the final clash between the two sides and sorting out the aftermath for our characters.
One could read into this turn of the century tale of poor rural folk versus burgeoning, affluent town's people as a larger allegory to the us-versus-them post 9/11 world. You could also just read it is a historical thriller where morality falls away in the form of madness.
Franklin doesn't shrink from presenting the dire living conditions and tenuous lifestyles of those that live on the fringes of society and he takes his time (almost the first three quarters of the book demonstrating it). It reminded me most of Woodrell's Winter's Bone in its depiction of the clannishness nature of the rural poor and McCarthy's No Country for Old Men in its lament of being unable to understand what the world was becoming.
Franklin also doesn't make any of the characters larger than life. Everyone feels very natural and the two main protagonists are chosen carefully to give the reader insight into two sides of the conflict and each character is drawn exceedingly well (though the Sheriff does seem to dissolve into drink pretty quickly).
The last one hundred pages of so falls more in line with genre conventions (and one could argue is better for it at least in terms of narrative push) in setting up the final clash between the two sides and sorting out the aftermath for our characters.
One could read into this turn of the century tale of poor rural folk versus burgeoning, affluent town's people as a larger allegory to the us-versus-them post 9/11 world. You could also just read it is a historical thriller where morality falls away in the form of madness.
rosseroo's review
4.0
I stumbled across Franklin's book Smonk and loved it so much that I sought out and read this debut novel of his. Based on the real life "Mitcham War," it takes place in Clarke County, Alabama in the 1890s, where simmering resentment of landowning townsfolk by poor backcountry men boiled over into violence. This is largely told through the eyes of aging sheriff Billy Waite and teenage orphan Mack Burke.
When the latter accidentally kills a prominent businessman during a highway robbery, it sets in train the formation of the "Hell at the Breech" gang led by the cunning "Tooch" Bedsole. Matters escalate when the town judge hires a recently arrived young man to "investigate" the gang, without telling the sheriff.
It's a really nice bit of historical fiction, capturing the visceral feel of the time and place, and doling out equal time to both sides of the "war." Neither side is virtuous, and the sheriff is perhaps a touch too much of the stock wise old lawman trying to walk the line between the law and justice. Definitely worth reading if you're a fan of fiction about late 19th-century America or the deep South in general.
When the latter accidentally kills a prominent businessman during a highway robbery, it sets in train the formation of the "Hell at the Breech" gang led by the cunning "Tooch" Bedsole. Matters escalate when the town judge hires a recently arrived young man to "investigate" the gang, without telling the sheriff.
It's a really nice bit of historical fiction, capturing the visceral feel of the time and place, and doling out equal time to both sides of the "war." Neither side is virtuous, and the sheriff is perhaps a touch too much of the stock wise old lawman trying to walk the line between the law and justice. Definitely worth reading if you're a fan of fiction about late 19th-century America or the deep South in general.
eleellis's review
5.0
Helluva book. Why Tom Franklin is not a household name I do not know. Like William Gay, this man is sparse in his words, but his words paint an entire picture.
Of course, this book is filled with violence and hard living people, many who are not favorable at all, but his writing just flows.
Of course, this book is filled with violence and hard living people, many who are not favorable at all, but his writing just flows.
ibeforem's review
3.0
Overall, not a bad historical novel. Doesn’t especially have a happy ending. And it’s no To Kill A Mockingbird, despite what some of the reviews say. Took me a while to get through this one. I guess I wasn’t real excited to read it.
More...