Bull Mountain (2015) by Brian Panowich

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Bull Mountain (2015)

by Brian Panowich

Dahlonega, Georgia

Georgia: 7/26

   Brian Panowich had the audacity to open his debut novel- a genre thriller/noir, with a quote from Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.  I think I actually gasped when I heard it on the very decent Audiobook.  Of course, no serious author influenced by Cormac McCarthy would open their book with a quote from a Cormac McCarthy novel- it's ridiculous.  For a genre writer to do it, on the other hand, certainly telegraphs a literary level of ambition.  I'm not a huge detective fiction/regional noir guy outside of the Coen Brothers, but in the context of the 1,001 Novels project I love the detective fiction/noir titles and seek them out in Audiobook form.  

   To the author's credit there are some genuinely shocking passages that do, indeed, evoke some of Cormac McCarthy's roughest moments.  There's also some troubling content that seems positively retro by the "trigger warning" standards of contemporary authorial license to depict trauma in the context of genre fiction.  I can't really get into it without spoiling the major plot reveal, which is the only twist on a conventional shoot em up double cross type scenario involving a rural crime family which dominates the titular Bull Mountain, where they have evolved from moonshine to weed to meth over the course of three generations.  Along the way they have made common cause with a Jacksonville motorcycle gang with a sideline on what we would today call "ghost guns."  Enter a mysterious DEA agent with a dark secret, and you've got a book that won the International Thrillers Award for best debut.

  

Crossing Ebenezer Creek (2017) by Tanya Bolden

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Crossing Ebenezer Creek (2017)

by Tanya Bolden

Ebenezer Creek, Georgia

Georgia: 6/26

  Crossing Ebenezer Creek is a YA novel based on a horrific real-life event during Sherman's March to Georgia during the Civil War.  Basically, a corps commander under General Sherman, ironically named Jefferson C. Davis, destroyed a pontoon bridge that was crossing Ebenezer Creek in Georgia, allegedly because he was concerned about Confederate soldiers.  The destruction of the bridge stranded hundreds of freed slaves who were following the Union army on the wrong side of the river, and many (tens? hundreds?) drowned, those who remained on the far bank when the Confederates arrived were either killed or re-enslaved. 

   Pretty heavy subject for a YA novel, amiright?  But basically, the horror only happens at the end, and the rest of it is just a YA book written from the perspective of a freed slave following Sherman's army to Atlanta, so it gives a good sense of that experience, and it was interesting to learn about this little known historical atrocity in Civil War era Georgia- perpetrated by the Good Guys, no less!

The Darkest Child (2005) by Delores Phillips

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Darkest Child (2005)

by Delores Phillips

Cassville, Georgia

Georgia 5/26

   The Darkest Child is a real cabinet of horrors, about a light-skinned African American prostitute and her brood of 10 children, written from the perspective of one of the daughters.  It is a one-off by an author who never wrote another novel, I'm assuming based on that fact, that this was a thinly veiled work of auto-fiction.  If it wasn't, it is an incredibly fucked up work of imagination, if only because large portions of the plot revolve around the Mom forcing her various, very underage daughters, including the narrator, into acts of prostitution with men from the town.  Mom is, as one would expect, both mentally ill and a substance abuser- she is frequently depicted clawing invisible bugs from her face in times of distress.

   Anyway. I thought The Darkest Child was dark, indeed.

The Atlas of Reds and Blues (2019) by Devi S. Laskar

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Atlas of Reds and Blues (2019)

by Devi S. Laskar

Roswell Road and Johnson Ferry Road, Marietta, Georgia

Georgia: 4/26

   The Atlas of Reds and Blues is yet another novel on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America that is focused on the police shooting an innocent person for little or no reason.  I think I might be up to a half-dozen books with some variant of this plot out of the 200 novels I've read from this list.  So we are talking about 3 or 4 percent of this Library of America centering around police shootings of innocent citizens.  Here, the victim is the narrator, a Bengali-American woman living in suburban Georgia.  She is a Mom of three, she holds down a part-time "Mommy track" job at her local newspaper and her husband is away on business almost always.  The story is told in flashback perspective, which made it refreshing in a literary merit kind of way. 

  Unfortunately, her experience doesn't add much to the tapestry of American Lit this project represents.   This narrator is America, through and through, other than her complaining about the way she is treated by white people in suburban Georgia, you wouldn't even know she was Bengali-American.  The open, thoughtless racism she recounts had be checking the publication date to make sure I was reading something contemporary and not from the 1970's (though some of the racism was from the girlhood of this narrator.)

   And not specific to this book but to all of the narratives that involve people being shot by the cops.  Look, I've worked in criminal justice for my entire career. I am nothing is not empathetic to innocent victims of police brutality but what consistently amazes me about these narrative, fictional and real life, is that the victims never seem to understand what the Cops are thinking about before they shoot.   Like, don't you know it's a bad idea to make sudden movements and/or generally disregard what Cops are asking you to do, especially when they raise their voices?  People should have some awareness of how law enforcement reacts in stressful environments and try not to do those things.