Hell at the Breech (2003) by Tom Franklin

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Hell at the Breech (2003)

by Tom Franklin

Mitcham Beat, Alabama

Alabama: 1/18

    I'd probably put Alabama on a list of Ten Least Interesting states, but maybe this experience will change my mind.  So far, I'd put Rhode Island and Delaware on that same list.   I had to stumble into the Alabama chapter because there are so few Audiobooks (that aren't sad POV's/coming of age books about poor women) in this chapter.  Hell at the Breech drew comparisons to Elmore Leonard, though I personally saw kinship with Cormac McCarthy's books from before he left Tennessee for the desert Southwest.  Hell at the Breech is a rare book on from this part of the country that doesn't feature any African American characters, this being a part of the country where African Americans were forced out after the Civil War.  Instead, the dynamic is poor white country-folk vs. wealthy town-folk, as illustrated by the eponymous gang of country "Night Riders," who go by Hell at the Breech. 

   The plot revolves not around violence against local African Americans (who apparently do not exist in this part of Alabama at the time of the novel, the 1890's) but rather traces a conflict between a local sharecropper turned general store owner and his animus against the town folk, as represented by the local Sheriff and his cousin, the Judge.   The major protagonists are Mack Burke, an orphan boy who works at the store of the magnificently named Tooch Bledsoe, leader of Hell at the Breech, and the sheriff, Billy Waite.

   Hell at the Breech was certainly a win for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  I'm surprised no one made it into a movie.