Hell at the Breech : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written by a true storyteller
Review: This story, set in the late 1800s in the Southern rural district of Mitcham Beat, begins by introducing us to Macky Burke, a boy on the brink of manhood. In a boyhood moment of adventure, Macky and his brother accidentally commit murder one night and set off a series of events so violent that it changes life in this tiny backwater forever. Tooch Bedsole, brother of the murdered politician/store owner, takes over the store and makes it a center of power for the gang that calls itself "Hell at the Breech," and proclaims the townies the sworn enemy, killers of his brother, Arch. Macky, in reparation for the debt his adoptive grandmother ran up at the general store under the previous owner, is assigned to work for Tooch until the debt is paid off, and is therefore caught up in the increasingly violent activities of the gang. The story reaches a page-turning climax when over 40 men ride out to Mitcham Beat from town to put an end to the lawlessness in a brutal battle scene.
The setting and characters in Hell at the Breech are mean, dismal, and poverty stricken, but Franklin's writing style so strikingly beautiful that the reader is entranced, caught between a world both beautiful & ugly at the same time. In prose-like sentences, Franklin weaves a tale based on actual events and gives the world a wonderfully complex and compelling novel. This book is highly recommended!!

Rating:
Summary: No Place Like Home
Review: Tom Franklin has manificently described what life in "backwoods" Clarke County, AL was like in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. This area refered to as Mitcham Beat is present day Chilton and surrounding areas, including some of the Scotch Management Area. Knowing the families that are in this novel, it is hard for me to read it as if it were fiction. Names have been changed to protect the reputation of "old money", but the horrific ordeals that people were subjected to were not in the least altered. These incidents may well have not happened in this order or in the way written, but many people, if alive today, could tell of demeaning things done to humans of both black and white races. He has done justice to the way of living and the thoughts of country folk. Being from Grove Hill myself, I am very proud of Tom Franklin and would love to read more novels written about our home.

Rating:
Summary: No Place Like Home
Review: Tom Franklin has manificently described what life in "backwoods" Clarke County, AL was like in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. This area refered to as Mitcham Beat is present day Chilton and surrounding areas, including some of the Scotch Management Area. Knowing the families that are in this novel, it is hard for me to read it as if it were fiction. Names have been changed to protect the reputation of "old money", but the horrific ordeals that people were subjected to were not in the least altered. These incidents may well have not happened in this order or in the way written, but many people, if alive today, could tell of demeaning things done to humans of both black and white races. He has done justice to the way of living and the thoughts of country folk. Being from Grove Hill myself, I am very proud of Tom Franklin and would love to read more novels written about our home.