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.

Jubilee (1966) by Margaret Walker

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Jubilee (1966) 

by Margaret Walker

Lee County, Georgia

Georgia: 12/26

  Almost half-way through Georgia, and it has been a bit of a slog.   This is the last Audiobook- it's all reading hard copies of books without Audio options, YA titles and coming-of-age books from here on out.  Jubilee is sure to end up in my top five for this state simply because it wasn't written in the past decade from the perspective of an adolescent. Vyry is the iconic protagonist and frequent narrator, she is born a slave, and lives through the Civil War and aftermath as she tries to forge a destiny as a newly emancipated woman.  I thought the Ante-Bellum chapters were particularly interesting, and by that I mean "savage" because I simply can't get over the cruelty of the ante-bellum slavery system.  Of course, all American slavery was an abomination, but there were better or worse situation, and the late-period, plantation based cotton growing economy of the deep south was the worst of them all.

   The chapters on reconstruction are also interesting, giving the account of a newly freed African American family of some means, relatively speaking, and their struggle to simply exist in a world where they were surrounded by white supremacy.