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Book Review: HELL AT THE BREECH review by Hal Jacobs There was a time when Sheriff Billy Waite knew everything. Knew every time a dog sat down to scratch in a far-away crossroads store. Knew every crooked merchant, struggling farmer, good-hearted boy and every twisted sociopath between the town of Grove Hill, Alabama, and the wilderness of Mitcham Beat. But that time is long past. As the novel opens in the fall of 1897, Sheriff Waite is sliding towards retirement. He spends more time sipping whiskey and smoking stogies on the front porch, while ignoring scowls from his quiet, churchy wife. Then the killings begin. First, he learns about an honest storekeeper who is gunned down on a dark country lane. Then he hears reports about a group of men in hoods who are terrorizing local farmers, butchering some and driving out others. Nobody dares talk about the gang, or why they've unleashed hell in the countryside around Mitcham Beat. In this epic Western (based on an actual story), Sheriff Waite must saddle up, perhaps for the last time, and face the evil that lurks all around him, from corrupt townspeople to a deranged killer with a taste for necrophilia. He must also decide the fate of Mack Burke, a teenager raised by a country midwife, who becomes deeply involved with the gang leader Tooch Bedsole. A dark and tormented soul, Tooch is also a complex character whose grotesque view of the world has been beaten into him by years of abuse and backbreaking labor. His volatile anger fuels the novel's intensity--he's an open container of gasoline sitting next to an open fire. When Tooch claims Mack as an indentured servant, at first the young boy fears for his life. He imagines "Tooch coming at him with a knife. With a club of firewood. Noosing him in a rope from the tack aisle and dragging him across the floor and over the jagged teeth of the porch boards and down the steps." Later Mack finds himself in danger of losing his soul when the gang accepts him into their brotherhood. As in his collection of short stories, Poachers, Franklin brings immense lyrical power to his debut novel. With a sharp eye for detail, he describes a landscape in which nature (and God) turns a blind eye to the incredible cruelty wrought by man. Franklin writes like a hunter who kneels down beside his dying prey so he can record the last sigh and twitch, and describe the look in its eyes as the last spark of life fades into nothingness. Rarely does he allow a trace of sentimentality to infect his characters, except for a kind of innocence between brothers. While other domestic relationships seem distant, embittered or ruined, brothers find a way to stay connected in a mean, uncaring world. This is historical fiction, told from alternative viewpoints, that makes you sit up and take notice. Every detail in these characters' lives is heightened and electrifying, as if every moment may be their last. Nothing is wasted, not a single birdcall or drowned puppy. And the action builds to a classic showdown that Larry McMurtrey or Sam Peckinpah would be proud to own. Franklin, a native of southern Alabama, teaches at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. An edited version of this review appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, June 8, 2003.
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