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A review by rosseroo
Hell at the Breech by Tom Franklin
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.