Southern Gothic at its best - not quite as literary and poetic as [[William Gay]] but in the same neighborhood. Based on a real explosion of violence and corruption in Alabama following the Civil War. The characters are complicated and eccentric, and heart-breaking. A couple of brothers accidentally kill a prominent store owner and politician in a juvenile attempt to steal enough money to visit the local prostitute. The brother of the deceased forms a vigilante group with the ulterior motive of gaining power in the backwoods area. The only person to stand against the group is a tired sheriff, at the end of his career and motivation.

[[Tom Franklin]] is fairly well-known only in the communities of Alabama and Mississippi, but should be read more widely than that.

Recommended!!!!
4 bones!!!! ( )

Talk about gut-wrenching. I don’t think I took any regular breaths while I was reading this book. It was based upon a true incident, and while all the characters and events were fictional, the actual atmosphere must have been oppressive in the county in which this occurred.

The story unfolds around the character of Macky Burke, a sixteen year old boy who becomes, without any recourse, involved with a gang of brutal murderers who terrorize a town on the excuse of being country folk avenging themselves against city folk. Sheriff Billy Waite, a decent and honest man, represents the law in the county, but he must contend with corruption on one hand and an almost lax attitude toward crime on the other.

As events escalated, I became very fearful for young Macky Burke. To not do as instructed by the criminal group that called itself Hell at the Breech was sure death, to do as instructed put him on the wrong side of the law and destined for a hangman’s noose. Just staying alive seemed to be an almost impossible goal. These were dangerous, immoral, sinister men, but the law was stacked against a man born to the poverty of Mitcham Beat and even Waite, the good man, is a stern taskmaster.

None of the characters in this book are shallow or uncomplicated. There is not a definitive line between good and evil, and there is some of each on both sides of the issue. It is easy to understand why people would wish to defy the system, but also easy to see that the system was only barely able to hold off the chaos of lawlessness. It was evident that no one’s life was easy and that try as hard as they may some of these people could not outrun their difficult lives. But, the amount of callousness was astounding.

To say you enjoy a book like this one seems wrong. I did, though. I didn’t want to put it down to do those necessary things that interrupt our reading. There didn’t seem to be any part of the narrative that wasn’t moving at an unstoppable speed. Generally, I can pause at a section ending, but I found it just as difficult to break when a break was given as to pause in mid-sentence. Many modern-day thriller writers could take a tip from Tom Franklin on how to build and hold tension and develop a mystery.
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Long-winded for a rather basic story of evil and retribution. But I enjoyed the atmosphere and colloquialisms. Felt like travelling to the end of the 19th century backwoods of Alabama. Loved the first chapter. The author's first novel shows high potential. Looking forward to reading his later works,. ( )

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. ( )

Franklin's fictionalized account of Southwest Alabama's Mitcham Beat War excels in characterization and atmosphere. It is much more realistic than his later novel, Smonk, but just as gritty. Except perhaps for the ineffectual Sheriff's wife, there is no one in the book who is totally good or bad. Even the characters who carry out the foulest, most murderous deeds have their sympathetic sides. The book works on multiple levels--as a boy's coming of age story, as a tale of country vs. town, and as the story of the aging Sheriff, fighting against being burnt out and often drunk, to do some semblance of his job. As is usual in Franklin's work, he immerses us into a strange yet believable world that is certainly alien to any of us who didn't grow up in the very rural South. And as I have come to expect, his writing is fluid and vivid throughout. This is a writer to devour. ( )