Hell at the Breech Book

Hell at the Breech tells of an often overlooked part of America's history. When we think of the lawlessness in 19th-century America's Wild West, we often forget that other parts of the USA were also frontier territories that were ruled by the gun in the late-19th century. The rural South, suffering the effects of the Civil War, was also a place of small towns, far-flung rural communities and renegade outlaws. Tom Franklin tells a fictionalised version of the Mitcham War of Clarke County, Alabama in the 1890s. When a local politician was accidentally killed, a feud developed between rural outlaws and townspeople in which lawlessness and bloodshed reached shocking proportions. Tom Franklin weaves a captivating tale based on these events. Franklin's spare, but vivid language is in the best tradition of Southern American writing. His observant eye picks up the detail of the ignorant and violent rural poor, as well as the hypocrisy and cruelty of the town dwellers. The frightening tale of redneck murderers and vengeful townsfolk reveals the darker side of human nature in a way that avoids both easy judgement and prurience. The violent story is told with simplicity and immense power rather than gratuitousness. Franklin hints at how the violent frontier past of the USA is part of her present inheritance, and so holds up a mirror to a society that is at once deeply religious and deeply violent. Franklin is a writer to watch. He explores powerful themes within a gripping story without apology. Like the hero of his story, he exercises restraint and dignity, but he shoots straight. --Dwight LongeneckerRead More